This will be the end of me
by AlphaandOmega99
Summary: Humphrey has had it rough... being adopted and brought into Garth's family has not been easy, however being adopted at nine and a half, it is the last thing he remembers. He knows nothing but the constant beatings he receives, how does he change? Bad summery. Rated M for language.
1. Chapter 1

**Have not posted in a while, have worked on my grammar. So here goes. :)**

 **Chapter 1**

Humphrey Heavern had no memory of the first nine years of his life. Anything before that time was a complete blur to him. Everything else from age nine and onward, he remembered quite well. Even so, he had always felt like he didn't belong with his family, that he had been adopted since he didn't have a good relationship with anyone in his family. They were of the dysfunctional, violent sort. Humphrey hated violence, so he figured that he couldn't be related any of them. After all, he was nothing like them.

Humphrey's story begins early, during the summer of 1990 when he was nine years old, where his memory picks up. For the summer, he and his brothers were headed to Virginia where their aunt, otherwise known as Tony's sister, lived. Salty was still wetting the bed at this time and Tony's sister was having a hard time dealing with it. Over the phone, the two of them had discussed what was to be done about Salty's bed-wetting. For the longest time, Tony had simply been changing the sheets. He didn't want to force Salty into diapering, not wanting his son to feel any more embarrassed about his problem than he already did.

Their aunt picked them up from the airport as the plane landed and she took them to the local store. Humphrey and Garth walked  
while their aunt pushed the cart. Salty was walking behind them. Aside from getting ingredients for dinner, they wandered over to the infant section (much to Salty's chagrin) and she selected a three-pack of plastic pants. How they were supposed to help Salty with his bed-wetting, Humphrey didn't know. From there, they continued their shopping, grabbing a couple of two liter of sodas and a few things for breakfast the following morning. In silence they paid for their items and went to their aunt's house out in the country.

Garth and Salty helped their aunt prepare the meal while Humphrey lazily watched television in the living room. With his aunt not liking him all that much, Humphrey thought that it was best if he just stayed out of the way and allowed them to go about their business. Dinner would get done faster without him. He shut off the television as he saw them setting the table. He was stopped by his aunt when he attempted to sit down at the table.

"I don't believe I called you, did I?" she asked.

Humphrey shook his head.

"Then go sit down. Don't come in here unless I call you."

Humphrey merely shrugged his shoulders and went to sit down on the couch again, only to be called into the kitchen two minutes later by his aunt. He sat down between Salty and Garth, fixing his own plate along with the rest of them, neither one of them talking. As far as their aunt was concerned, dinner was to be spent in silence, unlike at home where they spent their dinner telling Tony about their day. Regardless, the meal was enjoyed by all, even if they weren't allowed to speak.

As soon as dinner was over, Salty retreated to the bathroom while Garth helped his aunt with the dishes. When she heard the hinges of the bathroom door creak, she left Garth to tend to the dishes while she checked to make sure that Salty was wearing his plastic pants. She gave him a nod of approval when she realized that he indeed was wearing them and went back to the kitchen, leaving Salty to join Humphrey on the couch to watch television.

If you could call it that, anyway. Because she lived in the country, their aunt only had cable, and it only got three channels. Well, four, actually. There was CBS, ABC, and PBS. The "fourth" channel was practically the same channel: CBS. The only difference was that there was a different news anchor and the news and shows ran at different times. Because of this, there was hardly anything on, which left the two of them quite bored. Of course on PBS there were the educational shows, and on ABC there were some sitcoms that were playing. Nothing too exciting. This left the two of them with the only option of going to bed.

Before going to bed, however, Salty was checked to make sure that he was still wearing his plastic pants before he was allowed to go to bed. They and Garth were all forced to share a bed in the guest bedroom. Luckily, it was a rather large bed with plenty of room for each of them to sleep on. The only downside to all of this was the fact that Garth snored and Humphrey oftentimes would take most of the cover, claiming that he needed the warmth more than they did. After brushing their teeth and Salty changing into his pajamas in the bathroom out of embarrassment over the plastic pants, they climbed into bed with the sound of Garth and their aunt washing the dishes their only means of being lured to sleep. No bedtime stories. No lullabies. Just the sweet, faint sound of running water to get them to go to sleep.

The worst thing about the plastic pants is that there was nothing to absorb the urine when Salty actually did wet the bed, so they ended up leaking. Unfortunately for him, this made the visit all the more stressful. It was always hard on Humphrey and Garth since watching Salty having to go through it was hard for them to watch. Worst yet, they didn't have television to distract them.

The visit would have been more fun for all involved had they been allowed to go outside. They couldn't, thanks to the horses that trotted about the yard, surrounded by a brown fence. The most fun they had while on the visit was when they decided to throw paint at each other while painting the fence white, bored with the activity. Of course, Garth had disagreed with the idea, claiming that they shouldn't do anything to cause any mischief and instead should focus on the task that they needed to complete. Eventually, however, the task itself became too dull for him to handle and soon all three of them were running around in the yard, throwing paint at one another, being careful not to get any in sensitive areas like their mouths, noses, eyes, or ears. Basically, anywhere that would cause damage. Sadly, their aunt was furious at what they'd done. It was only when they stopped that they noticed the globs of paint all over the freshly cut green grass. She had them march inside the house to wash off, but even Garth admitted that it was the most fun he'd had while on the visit.

Their aunt wasn't the only bitch in the family, however. Three months after they got back home they decided to visit their grandmother on Tony's side of the family. Tony had sent them there, claiming that he needed some space and some time to himself. The Wolfs didn't mind, really. The only problem was their Grandma Pat was a mean, old nasty lady who was constantly pulling pranks on the Wolfs. It was fun for Humphrey until he became the butt of her pranks. One prank that she pulled involved her mixing hot sauce into Salty's food while he was using the restroom. When he came out, Garth quickly got up and warned Salty about the incident before the latter had a chance to eat.

It was a warm afternoon at Grandma Pat's humble abode, during which Humphrey was trying to read a comic. Unfortunately, he had a hard time doing it since Grandma Pat kept licking her finger and sticking it in his ear. Eventually, he grew sick of it. Throwing the book down on the couch, he stood up, got in her face, and demanded that she leave him alone before collapsing on the couch and once again trying to read his book. He couldn't concentrate on the book, however, mainly because he hated being at Grandma Pat's and just wanted to go home. Sighing, he threw the book to the floor and buried his face in the pillow in front of him, his body shaking as he sobbed quietly to himself.

"Let me see your eyes."

Humphrey raised up upon hearing his grandmother's voice and turned his head, only to be suddenly assaulted in the eyes with something that was hot. He cried out in pain, his eyes burning, his body shaking as pain. He couldn't speak. Anytime he tried all that would come out of his mouth would be highly-pitched wails of pain. Thankfully, he felt someone grab his hand and lead him away. He couldn't see, so it was hard for him to see who it was that was guiding him. When he heard running water, he assumed that it was Grandma Pat getting some water to wash his eyes out.

"Hold still," a voice ordered.

Humphrey had been wrong. It had actually been Garth who had lured him away. From the smells of freshness in the room, he guessed that they were in the bathroom.

"I must warn you," Garth added, "this is going to sting." He wrung out the washcloth and tentatively brought it Humphrey's eyes, drawing back at the last second for fear of doing more harm than good. He finally brought the cloth to Humphrey's eyes, and wasn't surprised when Humphrey yelled out and jumped back. He gingerly grabbed Humphrey's wrist and pulled him towards himself. "I know. I know it hurts. But, you're going to have to sit still if I'm going to clean your eyes. Okay?"

Humphrey could do nothing but nod in response, his throat hoarse from his yelling in pain. He bit his lower lip, wincing in pain as Garth dabbed at his eyes as gently as possible, wanting to cause as little pain to him as he could. He was grateful that Garth was at least taking the time to help him. He stood perfectly still, or at least as still as he could with his eyes burning and the wet material touching his eyes, thus making the burning sensation all the more worse. Finally, the stinging and burning subsided, but Humphrey could still not open his eyes. As to why, he didn't know. Garth seemed to catch onto this and led him back to the living room, advising him to just sit down and relax ("maybe it'll wear off in a few hours," he'd added). Humphrey did just that, although he quickly became bored and decided to go ahead and take a nap, seeing as he already had his eyes closed.

Throughout the week, Salty's bed-wetting was still an issue that came up in discussion. Sadly, unlike their aunt, Grandma Pat had a worse solution to the problem. One afternoon she went to one of the neighbors who had a toddler and borrowed one of the kid's diapers. Walking back in the house, she warned Salty that if he were to wet the bed again, she would put the diaper on him. Just to torture him further, she put the diaper on the table so he could look at it all day.

Just by looking in Salty's eyes, both Humphrey and Garth could tell that he was frightened of the punishment that lay ahead of him. His eyes didn't leave the diaper, no matter what, as if it had a fix on him. He found it hard to concentrate on anything but the diaper, so much so that he figured he might as well go ahead and put it on just so it would stop tormenting him. However, he didn't. He merely went about his day, trying to drive his mind away from the inevitable that would come about that evening.

Surprisingly, their Grandma Pat didn't diaper him that night. Instead, she just dumped him in the bathtub in the bathroom and let him sleep there for the remainder of the week that he and his brothers were there. Humphrey and Garth didn't try to stop her. What could they do? If they attempted to do anything, she would just have them arrested, lying to the police saying that they had assaulted her first, that they had attacked first, that she had just been trying to be a good grandmother. Of course since they were only children, the police would believe her false claims and have the Wolfs arrested.

For Humphrey, the week at Grandma Pat's felt extremely long. On the last day of their visit, Humphrey made sure that neither his Grandma Pat nor Grandpa Jeff weren't around before he opened the window to the living room. He called out to one of the few neighborhood kids that were around the area. He had already written a phone number on a slip of paper. "Here," he said, handing the young Wolf the slip of paper. "Call this number. It's for Kenny, my godfather. Call him and tell him that we need help. Tell him that needs to come and pick me and my brothers up."

The Wolf gave the red-clad Wolfa nod. "You got it!"

As the Wolf was running off to his house, Humphrey was jerked back into the house by the tight grip his Grandma Pat had on his hair. He was just grateful that the job had gone off without a cinch and that he and his brothers would be picked up fairly shortly. He was finally let go and allowed to go in the guest bedroom where Garth and Salty were busy playing Go Fish. They both sat on the bed cross-legged, their backs hunched over, a pile of cards resting in between them, a collection of cards held in front of their faces. Upon seeing him enter, Salty looked up at Humphrey and smiled.

"Humphrey, I want to go home," Salty said, setting his cards down.

Humphrey nodded, understanding where Salty was coming from. "Don't worry, Salty. I talked to one of the neighborhood kids and they should be calling Kenny right about now."

Garth smiled. "Good. When should he be here?"

"In a few hours, I suppose," Humphrey admitted. He climbed on the bed and sat down in front of them. "It's a long drive to here from California."

Salty nodded his head, drawing a card from the deck "True."

"For the time being," Garth suggested, "why don't you join us in a game of cards? It's the only thing to do around here."

Humphrey grinned and decided to go ahead and join them, being bored. With no television, no radio, no video games, and living in the country, there was very little to do around the house. They played a variety of card games until their godfather Kenny, along with Tony, came to pick them up and take them home.

Garth and Tony worked as a team, in that they would home-school Humphrey whenever he got suspended for not doing his school work. While Garth would role-play as the teacher, Tony would be in the living room serving as the principal. Garth and Humphrey sat at the kitchen table, sitting across from each other. Garth gave Humphrey a stack of worksheets that he had made the night before, based on the material that was being covered in Humphrey's classes, and have Humphrey do them.

Humphrey sat, scowling at the math worksheets that Garth had given him, angrily chewing on his eraser, occasionally using the pointed end to scratch at his head in confusion. This week's material they were currently covering were fractions, and he, for the most part, had no idea how to go about solving them. Math had never been his strong suit. It frustrated him terribly. He growled in anger and threw down his pencil, crossing his arms across his chest and glowering at the worksheet in front of him. He started to get up until he noticed that Garth was glowering at _him_.

"Tony," Garth called, "Humphrey's not doing his work."

Humphrey let out a groan of annoyance. Any time he would get frustrated with his work, instead of letting him take a break and come back to it later, Garth would take Humphrey's frustrations to mean that he was refusing to do his work.

"Humphrey, get in here," Tony called.

Said Wolfsighed and walked in the living room, standing in front of his father.

"Wait here," Tony said, getting up and leaving the room. He went in a nearby room and came out with two-inch thick dictionaries. He placed them on Humphrey's outstretched open palms. "Hold them for thirty minutes."

Humphrey nodded his head and concentrated on the dictionaries that he was currently holding. His arms shook as the muscles in them were being strained, the weight of the dictionaries being more than he could be. He just wasn't strong enough to hold the dictionaries for as long as Tony wanted him to. He let out a soft groan of pain, the dictionaries continuing to hurt his palms. He let out a sigh of relief as the books suddenly fell from his hands, his arms giving out for having held them for only a minute or so.

He swallowed hard upon seeing the disapproving look on his father's face. He knew what was coming. Without warning, he was jerked forward by the arm and swiftly swatted on the bottom a few times before the books were once again placed on his open palms. He was once again told to hold them for at least thirty minutes. If he could do this, then he would be allowed to go back to doing his schoolwork. Being only nine years old, however, he could only hold the books for so long, roughly for about a minute.

He went through the process at five or six times: holding the books, dropping them, getting spanked, and then repeating the process all over again. It wasn't until Tony got so fed up with doing it that he suggested that Humphrey just go to his room. The red-clad Wolfwas grateful about this, as it gave him some time to himself and gave him a chance to get away from his father and brother for a while, at least until dinnertime.

Humphrey had no memory of going to school on the day where his memory picked up. All he could recall was sitting outside the principal's office, his hands folded in his arm, staring down blankly at his shoes that were just a couple of feet above the floor. He waited patiently, his heart thumping in his chest, unable to recall what he'd done to get called down to the principal's office. He felt as if his heart was in his throat, making it hard to breathe. Why was he so nervous? It wasn't as if this was his first time being called down to the office. He was called down to the office a number of times on a regular basis and being suspended for not doing his schoolwork. Maybe the reason why he was so on edge was because this time it was more serious than that.

To Humphrey, it was as if he'd been asleep this whole time, shrouded in darkness, until he'd just now woken up. It was as if he had no past. Of course he knew who Tony was, how to talk, and whatnot. As for his past, he had no memory of it. He couldn't recall anything. Memories of his childhood were a complete blank, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn't remember anything. What was wrong with him?

He gazed at the clock that was behind the secretary. It was two o' clock, just an hour before the school day ended. He just hoped that he would be able to go back to class and continue on with his school day until the bell rang and he could go home.

Looking to his left he was grateful to find that his backpack was resting in the chair beside him. However, it reassured him of the fact that he wasn't going back to class when he was done. He swallowed at what was going to happen to him next.

The door to the principal's office opened and Tony stepped out, closing the door behind him, giving his son a look of disappointment that Humphrey was used to by now. Without saying a word, he slipped his backpack onto his shoulders and walked with his father out to the car. "So, what did she say?" He opened the passenger door and got in.

"Is it true that you brought a bomb to school?" Tony asked. The engine roared to life, but he eyed his son.

Humphrey blinked. "What?"

"According to the principal, you brought a plastic egg with two marbles in it and said that it was a bomb."

Humphrey took a moment to look around the schoolyard. Funny, there were no police cars. No bomb squad. If he had indeed done what Tony was accusing him of, then he figured that there should have been a bomb squad invading the school, putting the school on lock down. Or at the very least, a team of policemen. Even so, he found the story that Tony was feeding him very hard to believe. He wasn't a violent person. Furthermore, why would he bring a plastic egg with two marbles in it and declare that it was a bomb, thus sending the whole school into a panic? It just didn't make any sense whatsoever to him, and he refused to believe it unless he had some actual proof. For example, where was this so-called "bomb?" Again, if there was such a thing in the school, then surely the principal wouldn't have it? A bomb squad would have been immediately contacted and it would have been confiscated by the police as evidence for his wrongdoing.

Humphrey was still struggling to figure all of this out when Tony pulled up to a building. Turning his head, Humphrey discovered it to be the Charter Oak Hospital. It was apparent that this was their stop. As Humphrey turned to look at Tony, his father was already unbuckling his seat belt and getting out of the car. Humphrey did so as well without question and followed his father to the front doors. He was about to go ahead and go through them when he was stopped.

"Now," Tony said sternly, "when we get in here, I want you to tell the lady at the front desk that you're suicidal and that you need to be admitted."

Humphrey blinked. He had no idea what a psych ward and being suicidal had to do with school and an Easter egg bomb. It made no sense. He didn't understand why his father was ordering him to flat-out lie so he could be admitted to a mental hospital. Nonetheless, he nodded his head. He trusted his father. So, with the plan set in motion, he walked in the hospital with his father and up to the front desk. Clearing his throat, he did as he was told, telling the lady at the front desk that he was suicidal.

Another female was brought into the room who led them down a hallway to a room. Humphrey was told to wait outside while his father and the female had a talk. Humphrey did as he was told, staring at the floor, his mind still overwhelmed with thoughts and ideas and questions. He still couldn't figure out why on Earth his father told him that he had brought a bomb to school when it was quite clear that he hadn't. It just didn't make any sense to him. At the very least he would be going home after the meeting between his father and the lady, and then he could put this whole ugly mess behind him and act like it'd never happened.

He jumped when he heard the click of the door and the hinges creaking as it was opened. He watched as his father and the female stepped out. He hopped off the chair and followed them to a nearby computer. Sitting at her desk the female began typing out Humphrey's information as it was given to her by Tony. The female nodded her head occasionally as she typed in the information. From time to time she requested that Tony repeat some of it so she got it all correct. Eventually, she took her eyes off the computer screen and turned to Humphrey.

"You'll have to stay here for a few days," she told him plainly.

Humphrey felt a tight knot in the pit of his stomach. He started rocking back and forth in his chair, mumbling to himself, trying to keep himself from crying. Ultimately, he couldn't fight it. Without warning, he burst into tears. He didn't want to be here! He wanted to go home! He was headed a tissue by the female. He couldn't stop crying. He looked up at Tony tearfully, pleading with him to take him home, to not leave him here. His pleas fell on deaf ears as his father ignored him and only continued to converse with the female behind the desk. It took a good thirty minutes to get all the information put into the computer. Once that was done, Humphrey and Tony were led to the children's ward.

The children's ward was at the back of the building. There were two rooms on either side of a desk in front of them. The door to the left led to the girls' unit. The door to the right led to the Wolfs' unit. Behind the desk there was a set of double doors. There was a buzz heard and the double doors opened, and the three of them continued on to the ward.

They walked down a long hallway. The door on the right led to the playroom where there was a football table, a television, and other activities that the children could participate in. There were a set of three doors on the left, right across from the playroom. The doors on the left and right were known as the solitary rooms, whereas the door in the center was known as the bathroom. There was another door on the left that was at the end of the hallway. They went through it and found themselves in the room that the ward doctors used.

"The doctor will be with you shortly," the female said before leaving the room.

Humphrey sat down in an abandoned chair, while Tony sat in the chair across from him. The two of them were silent while they waited for the doctor to come in. Shortly afterward, Dr. Brown entered the room. He shook hands with Tony and greeted Humphrey as well. After another twenty to thirty minutes of getting to know Dr. Brown and answering questions, it was time for Tony and Humphrey to say goodbye to each other.

Tony bent down and hugged Humphrey tightly. He seemed eager to leave as soon as possible because the hug only lasted a few seconds before he stood up and began to leave. Or at least he tried. With Humphrey clinging to his pants leg, it was sort of hard for him to go anywhere or do anything. Humphrey was dragged along the floor, his nails digging into Tony's skin as the latter tried but failed to leave the room without taking Humphrey with him. Eventually, he had to stop so he could get Humphrey off him. With Dr. Brown's help, he managed to pry Humphrey off his leg and leave the room, while Humphrey cried after him, begging Tony to take him home and to not leave him in the hospital. Just as before, his cries fell on deaf ears. His father didn't even bother to look back as he left the children's ward.

A nurse approached Humphrey and led him down another hallway, this one lined with several rooms on either side. Outside Humphrey's room, attached to the door, was a picture frame with a grid on it. Humphrey got the last room on the right. The door after it was the door that led out to the playground. The room was small. It contained two beds, two closets, and a desk and a chair resting between the two closets. There was a small room at the back of the room that was the bathroom. It contained a shower, a toilet, and a sink. It was no bigger than the room itself. If anything, it was actually smaller. There at least was a window. Below it was a heater/air conditioner. The wallpaper for the room was of Disney characters like Mickey Mouse, among others.

A doctor came in Humphrey's room and sat down with him to explain the rules and regulations that he had to abide by while at the Charter Oak Hospital. Humphrey, on the other hand, could have cared less about what rules and regulations he needed to follow. At the moment, he just wanted to be left alone. Understandably, he was very upset about what was happening. He was confused beyond all reason and couldn't understand why this was happening to him, why his father had decided to leave him here all alone. Nonetheless, he listened carefully. When he asked about the grid outside his door, the doctor explained to him that the hospital used a point system. The better behaved he was, the more points he got, and the more points he got made it so that he could stay up later. There were two bedtimes. The first bedtime was at eight thirty. The second was at nine. It was four thirty by the time the doctor finished talking and left Humphrey to get settled into his new room.

Humphrey wasn't interested in getting comfortable to his new surroundings. He was just interested in being left alone. Burying his head in his pillow, he cried until five. At this time a nurse came in and alerted him that it was time for dinner. He followed her to the play room, where their meals were served. He was given a tray of food as he sat down at a table. However, he wasn't awfully hungry. He ate slowly. Despite that he wasn't too hungry, he ate just enough to please the staff. They had a percentage for how much he ate. He gave back his tray and returned to his room.

From five thirty to seven thirty parents were allowed to visit their children to see how they were doing. This time was appropriately called "visiting time." Sadly, Tony, nor Garth and Salty, visited Humphrey, leaving him all the more hurt. He supposed that he shouldn't have been too surprised by this due to the fact that he didn't get along well with anyone in his family. When he realized that they weren't going to show up after a half-hour of waiting, he decided to go back to his room.

For the next hour and a half, he thought about things, still trying to remember his day, but all he could recall was him sitting in that chair outside of the principal's office, nothing more. Never anything more than that. It frustrated him. It angered him. He didn't understand why he was having to stay in the hospital. All he knew was that he was being punished for something. The question was, what?

Fifteen minutes after eight, forty-five minutes after "visiting time" ended, a nurse came into Humphrey's room and told him it was time for group therapy. He walked down the hallway along with the rest of the children. He noticed that most of them were his age. The youngest of them was rough seven years old. They walked into a room that was cool. There was a circle of fold-out chairs, their group therapy leader sitting in one of them. They sat down.

"Good evening," the group therapy leader stated. "I am Corrigan, your group therapy leader. I hope to help each and every one of you on the road to recovery." She removed a stack of composition notebooks from a box that was resting at her feet. "Now, these are journals." She handed them to the Wolf on her right. "Take one, pass the rest down. I want you to write down your feelings in these journals. Every morning when you wake up, write down how you feel. While you're getting your journals, let's talk about how you're feeling now and why you're here."

Humphrey tuned the other kids out as he struggled to figure out why he was at the hospital to begin with. While he had done what his father had requested of him, he wasn't suicidal, and he knew this. So, why was he in a mental institution to begin with?

His thoughts were broken as he felt a weight suddenly fall into his lap. He looked down to discover that he had been passed the stack of notebooks. As ordered, he took one and passed the rest down to the girl on his rest. He picked up his notebook and glanced at it. It was no different from the others that he'd passed down. It was black with a little bit of white sprinkled here and there. There was a large white space at the top on the cover for him to write down his name. There was a pen attached to the center of the notebooks, where the staples that held the pages together was found. He figured that his notebook would never get used. After all, he was never good at writing, and he had never had a real passion for writing to begin with. He saw no point to the notebook. He didn't see how writing about his feelings was going to help him get out of the hospital even faster. Even though he would only be in the hospital for a few days, he was sure that it would seem like forever to him.

He was grateful that the therapy session only lasted roughly fifteen minutes. He got up and left as soon as he was dismissed. Not surprisingly, he was exhausted from his ordeal throughout the day, not to mention all that crying had made him feel even more physically drained. He didn't care that he had to go to bed at eight thirty. He didn't care that if only he had a few more points he would get to stay up until nine. All he cared about was getting some sleep and being alone. Sadly, he had a hard time getting to sleep. Crying himself to sleep didn't help in the least.

Humphrey was woken up bright and early at seven thirty the following morning. After getting up, he was ordered to make his bed. Afterward, someone would come in to inspect it. There was no need for this, as Humphrey had fallen asleep on top of his covers the previous night. It had partly been because he'd been so tightly and mainly because the room was so warm. Nonetheless, his room was inspected and he was allowed to go to the play room to eat.

Along the way, Humphrey stopped as he passed the solitary rooms, hearing screaming coming from one of them. It made him uneasy. It sounded like the person on the other side of the door was being killed. It sent chills down his spine just from hearing the screams. He recoiled and quickly made a dash for the play room. However, given that breakfast wasn't served until eight o' clock, he was early. Sadly, he had nothing to do, so he just sat down at a table and tried to keep to himself. He had no interest in making friends, not at this place. When breakfast was served, he only ate half and returned his tray.

He still had some time to himself. During this time he could play a game or two with the other kids while he waited for the others to finish eating breakfast. He wasn't interested in playing games, however. He couldn't get over the howling screams he'd heard from the solitary room. Whether it was out of size or muscle or whatever, he had always seen himself as a big brother. He'd always seen it as his duty to protect those smaller than him. He wanted to make sure that the kid was all right, but the only way for him to do that would be for him to get in trouble so he could get taken to the solitary room. There was little chance of that happening, he realized, as he had always been a good egg.

He would have to con someone into helping him get in trouble. He noticed a kid not far from him. Walking up to the kid, he said, "Hey, you want to make a dollar?"

The Wolf shrugged. "Sure."

Humphrey grinned. "Okay, cool. Go tell that guy," he pointed over to a doctor, "that I hit you." He watched with bated breath as the kid carried out his order, but he frowned with the kid came to him alone, a frown on his face. "What happened?"

"He said that if he didn't see it, then it didn't happen. Regardless, he told me to tell you to leave me alone."

Humphrey frowned. "All right, then. Do it again."

This time Humphrey's plan worked. The doctor marched over to Humphrey, grabbed him by the wrist, and dragged him out of the play room. As he went through the doors, he heard the kid yell after him, "Hey, what about my dollar?!" Humphrey actually felt bad about this, seeing as how he'd had every intention to give the kid his hard earned dollar.

Humphrey was dragged to the time out area where the solitary rooms were. He smiled as he approached the doors, but his hopes were soon dashed as the doctor wrenched open the door opposite the one that the screaming Wolf turned banshee was being held in. He was thrown into the empty room, the door being locked behind him. For the first few seconds, he didn't understand what the big deal was behind being in the solitary room. After all, he wasn't being hurt or anything. He couldn't understand why the kid in the room beside him had been screaming so much. What was so bad about this? He could always sleep his time away until he was released, couldn't he?

He jumped, the silence in the room suddenly being interrupted by a series of loud bangs and faint screaming coming from the room beside him. The screaming, of course, wasn't as loud as it'd been before, but loud enough to where it could be heard through the thin padded walls of the room. From the sounds of it, the Wolf in the room beside him was trying to break through the glass window, to break through the door in a desperate attempt to get out of the room. He cringed when he heard something like bones cracking. The screaming faded into the distance, the kid being taken out of the room to get his hand cared for.

Humphrey let out a sigh at the tranquility that returned to the room. Finally, peace and quiet. After twenty minutes, the quiet tone of the room began to get to him. It was so quiet that he could actually hear his own heartbeat and nothing else, aside from his own breathing. He could hear nothing outside the room. Likewise, the room were soundproof. The walls and door were covered by tan rubber padding. The window in the door had chicken wire meshed into it. The door itself had four locks on it: a dead bolt and three separate barrel locks. One of the barrel locks was just below dead bolt. Another was at the top of the bottom, whereas the third and final barrel lock was at the bottom. As if any nine year old get even the dead bolt open. The amount of locks on the door was simply overkill.

There was a dark blue mattress laid on top of a wooden frame with small wooed slots cut into the wood. Humphrey had no idea what those were for. About ten or twelve feet above the mattress was a skylight. The smell of leather and rubber was all that he could smell.

With every minute that passed, it felt like an hour. Quickly, the silence in the room began to get to him. Now he understood why the Wolf had wanted out of rhea room so badly before, why the Wolf had been ferociously banging on the window to be let out. Humphrey wanted and he wanted out _now_. He ran up to the window and began to bang on it. "Hello?! Can anyone hear me?!" His breathing became heavy, fear getting the better of him. He continued to bang on the window, screaming for help, to be let out. He doubted anyone could hear him. The only chance he had of being heard was by way of him right next to the window and screaming his lungs out and hoping and praying that _someone_ on the other side heard him.

No one came.

His fear went into overdrive to where he was getting flat-out scared. He banged on the door with more determination, screamed with more volume, more fury. He was beginning to panic. He might as well have been on the moon or in the middle of flipping nowhere. It was as if the Rapture had occurred and he was the only soul left on Earth. That couldn't be the case. There had to someone, anyone that could hear him. If there was, then surely they would take pity on him and let him out, wouldn't they? He had his doubts of course, but he kept trying. Eventually, a nurse approached the door and he let out a sigh of relief.

"Are you going to be good?" the nurse asked upon opening the door.

Humphrey nodded his head excitedly. "Yes! Yes! Just let me out!" He leapt out of the room as soon as the female stepped aside.

"Go to your room and shower," the nurse suggested, closing the door. "You need to get ready."

Humphrey was only too happy to. At the very least they were permitted to have a hot shower. He was actually glad that she had suggested it. It had been a while since his last bath and he didn't smell very pleasant. He made sure to bathe every inch of his body. No matter how warm the water and no matter how tingly the bar of soap felt on his skin, he couldn't get his mind off the solitary room. Oh, what a horrible experience! It was one he dreaded having, and one he hoped he would never have to endure any time soon. The water was comforting, somewhat, allowing his mind to temporarily wander. For a brief moment, he felt as if he was home again in the bathroom that the family shared. Any moment now Garth would be banging on the door demanding him to hurry up so he could brush his teeth. He allowed a smile to come across his face. Sadly, his happiness didn't last long. As soon as he opened the bathroom door after drying off and getting dressed, reality hit him in the face, reminding that he was not home, that he was still at the mental hospital, at Charter Oak Hospital, no less.

Being that there was no clock in the room, he had no way of telling what time it was. Worst yet, he and the others weren't allowed to have any electronics, so he couldn't check his phone to see what time it was. He reclined on his bed, thankful that while here he wouldn't have to worry about doing any schoolwork. He quickly found out how wrong he was. He had just laid down for a nap when he was ordered by a nurse to go down to the play room. Apparently, the room was also used as their "school" as well, but it was hardly any school that Humphrey was familiar with.

Upon entering the play room, he sat down at an empty desk. He was given a work packet to work on, the packet having been designed for him based on his grade level. He did the work without question or argument, though he had to stop every now and then, particularly during math, it not being his best subject, to work out the problems in his head. He figured that he would have the regular eight to nine hours to work on it. Yet again, he was proven wrong, for after only an hour of work, class was dismissed, yet they didn't go anywhere. They were ordered to stay in their seats.

After school was over, what the staff called Art Therapy was next. Basically, it was at least an hour's worth of art to do. Finally, something that catered to one of Humphrey's interest. The only downside to this was the fact that they had a specific topic to follow. Today's topic was for him and the others to draw his favorite place to go. He figured that if today's topic was his favorite place to go, then he could only guess that they had a different topic for Art Therapy every day. Thinking about his favorite place to go wasn't all that difficult. He loved nature and he loved walking in the woods that were located behind his house. There was a creek far into the forest where he would sit on a rock and just listen to the sound of the creek flowing. It was where he went to get away from his family, to clear his head, and what have you. Humphrey could spend hours at the creek, especially on the weekends when he had nothing better to do. One of the good things about his family thinking that he was an incompetent idiot was the fact that he rarely had to do chores. Those were left to Garth and Salty. This allowed him to have more time to himself.

Like school, Art Therapy only lasted for and was only halfway finished with his drawing when the teacher dismissed them for group therapy at eleven o' clock. He figured that he shouldn't fret over not getting the project finished. He doubted that he would ever to finish it. Tomorrow they would have a new topic to work on. He was sure of it.

Through group therapy, Humphrey quickly learned that his feelings could use against him. Therefore, he rarely allowed his emotions to show. His words and emotions were used against him purely to make his stay at Charter Oak Hospital longer. If he said he had a problem with anything, they would extend his stay to "solve it." If he expressed any emotions that were negative, such as anger, sadness, or the like, they would extend his stay to "make him better." If he threw a tantrum, his stay was extended. Because of this, whenever he was asked how he was doing, Humphrey would frequently reply, "Fine." When asked what his goal while at Charter Oak Hospital was, he would reply with, "To go home." He figured that this type of response would shorten his stay at the hospital and hasten his journey to get home, where he was (somewhat) safe and sound.

For the fifteen minutes that he had to himself after lunch one afternoon, Humphrey decided to go ahead and take a nap. Even if it was only for fifteen minutes, he figured that he could that fifteen minutes to some good use. At the very least he would be getting some peace and quiet for a while. Sadly, his blissful slumber was short-lived as he was quickly woken up by a staff member. When he told where he was supposed to go, he was actually kind of glad that he'd been woken up.

He joined the other kids that were lined up at the door at the end of the hallway. The door was opened and they walked forward, the blinding sunlight hitting their eyes and making it difficult to see. It was a miracle none of them tripped as they headed down the stairs. There was a tennis court, but they had no balls or rackets, so playing tennis was out. Just being outside was a welcome relief. The group went their separate ways. Humphrey went and sat down in the grass, hugging his legs. Closing his eyes, he smiled as a cool breeze blew through his hair. He opened his eyes, however, when he heard shrieking and laughter coming from somewhere nearby. Turning his head he discovered a brick wall that he had failed to notice. Walking over to it and peeking over the edge he discovered that there was an elementary school right next to the mental hospital. In a way, he found it ironic that a place so innocent, so full of memories for him would be right next to his prison. At this point he would have given anything to just be out of the hospital and back in elementary school, even with the bullies and the harsh teachers and whatnot. It would be a breath of fresh air to be away from where he was now and back where he belonged. Sadly, there was little to no chance of that happening any time soon, as least not for another few days. How long had he been here anyway? How much longer did he have? He didn't know.

The recess didn't last long at all, roughly fifteen minutes. They were to go back to their rooms and write in their journals about how they were feeling. Humphrey did no such thing. He simply laid in bed and slept until a nurse came in his room and told him that it was time for art therapy. He was disappointed that he'd only been sleeping for an hour. If he'd had things his way, he would have been sleeping for well over an hour. It was hard for him to sleep at nighttime.

Today's art therapy was different. The group was walked to a wood shop that was on the other side of the campus. Once there, everyone was given a specific project to do. Humphrey decided to make a wooden car. Nothing too fancy. Something simple. However, making it was far from being anything but difficult. Basically, the framing of the car was already done; it was basically a solid piece of wood. All he had to do was snap the wheels on and paint the gall-darned thing. It really was quite boring, and here Humphrey had been excited to actually get to use his hands to make something. The whole thing was a complete waste of his time and creativity, not that such was accepted widely at the hospital.

Humphrey quickly became bored with life in the Charter Oak Hospital. Every morning he would wake up and eat breakfast before going to school, then art therapy, then have some quiet time, then group therapy. It was an endless cycle. The same thing, day in, day out. It was becoming quite tiresome and boring to Humphrey and he just wanted an excuse to get out of the Charter Oak Hospital.

Around Thanksgiving, he got his wish. During a quiet time session, he was notified that Tony had arranged to pick him up so that he could join the family for Thanksgiving. Throughout the morning, he was in a cheerful mood. As the day wore on, however, he began to grow more and more depressed. By five o' clock, his excitement had drained significantly. He followed the rest of the kids to the dining room, the one time out of Humphrey's whole time spent there that they were allowed to do so. The dinner hall was set up with various decorations and festive streamers and whatnot. He went through, grabbed what he wanted, and sat down to eat. By this time he was on the verge of tears, believing that the staff member had merely told him that his father was going to pick him up as a cruel joke. He wouldn't have been surprised if in fact it was a joke. Had Tony forgotten about him? Just when he was certain that the staff member had lied to him, a nurse told him that he was wanted up at the front desk.

Tony signed him out and led him out to the car. "Why did you come so late?" Tony gave him no answer. "I thought you forgot about me because you came so late."

"Have you eaten yet?" Tony asked.

Humphrey shook his head and got in the car, sitting beside Garth while Salty sat in the passenger seat. He was silent on the drive to their grandparents' house. While he had lied, he was afraid that if he admitted that if he had in fact already eaten, they would leave him out of the Thanksgiving dinner. No. They weren't that cruel, were they? Well, given how they were always telling him how fat he was, he wouldn't have been surprised if they had.

What really bothered him about the car ride was how uncomfortable it was. No one brought up the fact that Humphrey had been in a mental hospital for the past couple of days. Garth and Salty were acting as if everything was fine, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Tony probably never even told Garth and Salty about what happened. He probably just told them that he had gotten into an accident at school and had to be taken to the hospital. Well, that was partly true. Even so, didn't get they get the least little bit suspicions when Tony told them that they couldn't see him? It sure sounded like a cause for concern, at least in Humphrey's case.

Dinner was served an hour after Humphrey and the others arrived. For the hour that they wanted, the family simply mingled and chatted with each other. This only served to irritate Humphrey further as no one asked him where he had been for the past couple of days or why they hadn't heard from him. He decided to go upstairs where the only other television was located. He was in the middle of a ball game when Garth came up and told him that dinner was ready. Oddly enough, after dinner, he didn't go back upstairs to finish the ball game.

He decided to do some exploring instead. Tony's parents lived in a trailer park. It just so happened that, despite that it was past seven already, there were plenty of neighborhood kids to play with. Humphrey quickly made friends with them and they began playing a game of tag. Humphrey was having so much fun for once in the past couple of days that he completely forgot about the Charter Oak Hospital. For the longest time, he was free to just forget about everything that had happened to him over the past couple of days and just have fun, to be a kid again. Their game of tag was interrupted when Tony called Humphrey over. He walked over to his father. "We're playing tag right now. What's going on?"

"It's time to go back, Humphrey."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Two hours. Two whole fucking hours Humphrey had been out of the hospital and already he was on his way back. He didn't glance at Tony as the latter drove. He merely kept his gaze out his window, watching as the various trees and homes zoomed by. As the car neared the hospital, Humphrey began crying. He didn't let Tony see him cry, though. However, as they neared the front doors, Humphrey broke down and began crying harder like the day he did when he had first arrived at the hospital. He looked up at Tony with pleading eyes. "Please. Please let me come home."

Tony shook his head. 'No. You still have to stay. You can only come home on a day pass." With that, he opened the door and ushered Humphrey inside. Once he had signed Humphrey back in, he gave Humphrey a quick hug before hurrying off, while Humphrey was taken through the ward doors.

Humphrey walked as fast as he could back to his room. He flopped down on his bed when he entered his room and began crying. He couldn't believe he was back at the hospital yet again. He realized that Tony hadn't shed a tear while signing him back in and leaving him at the hospital. It wasn't hurting Tony that he was being kept prisoner at the hospital. He just wanted to go home.

For the rest of the evening, Humphrey confined himself to his room. The only time he left was to go to group therapy at fifteen minutes past eight, but he left and returned to his room the second it was over. Like the other nights before, he cried himself to sleep.

Humphrey received a surprise the following day. After breakfast, group therapy, and their quiet time in the morning, the kids were lined up to go to the gym. However, after the events of yesterday, Humphrey didn't feel like playing basketball with the others, or doing anything else for that matter other than sleeping. He sat on the bleachers and watched the other kids playing, wishing that he had a book to keep himself occupied. He let out a groan as he saw a staff member approaching him.

"You need to play with the others or you'll go back to the unit," the staff member told him.

Humphrey shrugged his shoulders. "Fine. Take me back to the unit." It would be nice to just lay back and get some more sleep. He was led back to the unit. When he started heading back to his room, the staff member grabbed his room and began leading him in another direction, towards the solitary rooms.

"No, you have to go to time-out," the staff member stated.

Humphrey's heart dropped and he glanced up at the man leading him. "Why?"

"If you wish to not participate in the activities that we ask you to, then you can spend that activity in time-out. You'll be kept in time-out for however long the activity is."

Humphrey kicked, attempting to pry himself out of the man's grip. "No! Please! Don't!" His pleas fell on deaf ears and he was continuously dragged down the hallway until they reached the solitary rooms. He was shoved in and the door was locked behind him, the bolt lock and the three barrel locks. Immediately, Humphrey began banging on the door. "Let me out! Let me out!" He didn't want to be in the horrible room again. The last time he'd been in the room was the first and last time he wanted to be in here. He'd lost it after only twenty minutes, and now he was supposed to maintain his sanity for a whole hour? He wouldn't have any of it! He kept banging and screaming to be let out. After ten minutes of this, a nurse approached the door and his heart fluttered at the thought that maybe, God willing, someone would let him, that his screams hadn't fallen on deaf ears after all.

"If you don't calm down, I'm going to put you in restraints," the nurse said.

Humphrey had no idea what she meant by this, but figured that it was probably worse than being locked up in the room. Because of this he stopped banging on the door. He backed away from the door, sitting down on the bed. Hugging his legs, he began to cry, his crying bringing about feelings of anger at how unfair his situation was. His anger eventually became too much for him and he threw the mattress across the room. It hit the wall opposite him and fell to the floor. Sighing in defeat, he moved over to the back of the room and sat down, continuing to hug his legs and cry his eyes out. There was no clock, so he had no idea how long he'd been in the room, but every minute felt like hours as the silence began to overwhelm him. The silence was torture. He couldn't stand being in the room. He just wanted to be let out.

Because there was no way to tell the time, he had no way of telling if the kids had returned from their ball game, and it didn't help that the room was soundproof. All he could do was wait in silence while the minutes ticked by to bet let out. He wasn't sure how long it was, but eventually a nurse opened the door and told him, "You can come out now." He was still crying as he exited the room, heading to his room. When he walked in he cried for a few more minutes. He scolded himself. _Come on, Heavern! Get a hold of yourself! Put yourself together!_ He struggled to do so. A nurse came in his room and told him that it was time for group therapy. He went in the bathroom that was adjoined to his room and washed his face to clear any signs of his crying before heading down to the play room for group therapy. Once that was over, he went with the other kids to lunch. The rest of the day went without incident, thankfully for him.

The next morning during breakfast, Humphrey and the others were told that they would be going to an outing. They would be going to see a film at the local movie theater after lunch. To Humphrey, this was like a breath of fresh air. Finally! A chance to get out of the hospital for a while. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be until after lunch, probably at one o' clock he figured, that they would be leaving, so he was forced to go through his regular schedule as always. He went to group, ate lunch, the whole routine. After lunch he and the others were sent to their rooms for some quiet time while the staff got everything ready.

At one o' clock, Humphrey and the others were gathered at the front entrance and led outside where there were two white unmarked vans waiting for them. They were loaded into the vans and driven to the movie theater. When Humphrey learned that the film they'd be watching was _Beauty and the Beast_ , he couldn't help but let out a low groan of disappointment. _Beauty and the Beast_ wasn't exactly his type of movie. Still, he figured he could endure it. It was at least a good excuse to get out of the hospital for at least an hour and a half.

The only downside to all of this was the fact that several staff members went along with them. To Humphrey, it was like going on a field trip at school, where several teachers went along with the students. However, unlike a field trip at school, Humphrey and the others weren't allowed to be out of the staff's sight for any reason whatsoever. Even when Humphrey went to go use the restroom he was led to the restroom by a staff member and then supervised by said staff member as he did his business. Needless to say, this whole ordeal made Humphrey extremely uncomfortable. At least the staff members took off their ID so no one would know where they or the kids were from, but looking at them anyone could tell that they were your usual run-of-the-mill family attending a movie theater. Throughout the whole thing, Humphrey felt uncomfortable, feeling as if everyone was watching him.

The movie ended and they were loaded back onto the vans like a herd of sheep being herded into their pens for shearing. They arrived at the hospital fifteen minutes after three and sent to their rooms for some quiet time. Fifteen minutes of that and they were sent to group for an hour before being sent back to their rooms for yet some more quiet time until dinner.

Humphrey received a shock at dinnertime. Instead of the usual crap that they were ordinarily served, it turned out that it was a patient's birthday and the kid's parents brought pizza for everyone. Finally, some actual food instead of the mush that they were served on a daily basis. While Humphrey relished in this, he made sure not to eat too much. For one, he didn't want to make himself look like a pig, although he probably already did due to him being overweight. And, two, he didn't want to have to endure the rest of the evening with a stomachache. However, there was a pang in the pit of his stomach. As he watched the kid celebrate his birthday with his parents, Humphrey began to think about his own folks and how they had never bothered to visit him. It made him very depressed, so as soon as the last group was over and done with, he went straight to bed. He had yet to use his points to upgrade to the nine o' clock bedtime, but he probably never would.

Because of the incident, Humphrey began to get very homesick. For this reason, he began to have unexplained, uncontrolled crying spells. When asked why he was crying, he responded with, "I don't know." Due to him feeling homesick, he had decided that he'd had enough. Tears still rolling down his face, he marched to the nurses' station and demanded that he be let free. "Call my dad and tell him to come get me. I can't take it here anymore. I want to go home."

The nurse behind the desk glared at him. "Step back. You're past the red line."

Humphrey glanced over his shoulder and noticed that there was a strip of red duct tape just across the floor of the doorway. Sighing, he walked backward until he was behind the red duct tape. He tried again. "Please let me go home. I want to go home."

The nurse said coldly, "No. You have to stay."

Not thinking, Humphrey stepped over the line and approached the desk, trying yet a third time. "Please let me go home. I want to go home." He was suddenly snatched by the arm by the nurse and dragged to the solitary room and thrown in before having the door behind him closed and locked. He fell to the floor crying in a puddle of his own misery. He furiously banged on the door, screaming to be let out, screaming that he wanted to go home. In his frustration, he picked up the mattress and threw it at the camera mounted in one of the corners of the room, forcing it to face the wall. He went back to pounding on the glass window with his fists, the chicken wire digging into his flesh and causing his hands to bleed profusely. After ten minutes of this, a nurse approached the bed.

"If you don't calm down," she warned, "I'm going to have you put in restraints."

Humphrey glared at her, fed up. "Make my little doggy day." He blinked. Where had that come from? Now that he thought about it, he remembered hearing it in a movie once. He knew that it was a stupid, idiotic thing to say, but for the time being, it was the only thing he could think of to say. He eventually got tired of trying to get help and sat down in the corner, hugging his legs and letting his tears to fall to the floor while his brain thought up of a solution to end his misery. During this time, thirty minutes passed by and yet no one came to let him out of the room. He wanted to be dead so no one could lock him up in the room ever again. Oddly enough, it was the first time he'd ever thought about death and wanting to be dead. He made himself a promise. If at the age of eighteen he was still going through immense amounts of emotional pain, being unloved, being lonely, then he would take his own life. He wasn't sure why he picked this particular date, but he did. In that same instant, he felt a wave of peace, a calm, settle over him, unlike anything he'd ever felt before. He couldn't exactly describe it, but all he knew was that in eight years he would be dead and gone, and no one would lock him up in solitary rooms again, or leave him at hospitals for days on end again, or hurt him anymore.

Ten minutes after making this resolution, he wiped the tears from his eyes and looked around the room to see if there was anything he could do to pass the time. Growing up, he had always loved trains. Noticing the bed lying by the wall, he picked it up and bent it before setting it up between the wooden frame of the bed and the wall, allowing it to serve as a tunnel. He got on his hands and knees and began crawling around the bed and going through the "tunnel," pretending that he was train trucking through the mountains and countryside. Obviously, it wasn't a lot of fun, but at least it was something to do to pass the time.

But if it wasn't loads of fun, then why did twenty to thirty minutes seem like such a short period of time for Humphrey? After about a half-hour of him playing train, a nurse finally came to the door. "Are you ready to come out?" she asked Humphrey.

Humphrey got up and approached the door so that he and the female were eye to eye. He nodded his head to answer her question. 'Yes, I am." The door was unlocked and he was set free at last. The first thing he did upon walking out of the room was look what time it was. It was twenty minutes past three by the time he got out of the room. Though he didn't need to be told, the nurse ordered him to go to his room and get ready for the next group therapy that was at three thirty. He did just that.

While in the solitary room Humphrey had built a mental wall for himself to help him deal with any further abuse that he would have to endure for the next eight years, at least until the date he'd picked for himself to end his life. Through this wall he was able to block out his emotions. It was a coping mechanism for him so he would no longer have to feel any hurt. It was very calming. He made him feel numb. Because of this, he was now able to control his crying. He didn't cry throughout the rest of the day. Needless to say, this freaked the staff out something fierce since he had been frequently crying during his stay at the hospital. Now, all of a sudden, he was calm and collected, not crying hardly at all. They couldn't understand it. This was not the same child they had locked up in the solitary room. When he got back from group that night, for the first time since his stay at the hospital, he didn't cry himself to sleep.

Unbeknownst to Humphrey, they had taped his whole session while in the solitary room, so they had him going off in the room, followed by him crying in the corner for about ten minutes, and finally roughly thirty minutes of him playing train all on film. Freaked out by this occurrence, they called in Tony and allowed him to view the footage.

The following morning when Humphrey was woken up, he was told that today was the day he was being discharged from the hospital. After getting back from breakfast, he packed his things and set them on a chair by the door. Unfortunately, he had no idea what time he was being released, so he had no choice but to go through the motions like it was any ordinary day. At group after lunch, he was given a trophy. It had a fake marble base with a plastic figure of a guy holding a round circle above his head which had two vines around the rim. On the copper plaque were the words, "Charter Oak Hospital Weekly Poster Child". He didn't much care for it. After getting back to his room, he unceremoniously dumped it in his bag with the rest of his belongings. He continued to go throughout his day.

At long last, at two o' clock, a nurse walked in Humphrey s' room and told him to get his things and report to the nurse's station. He happily grabbed his things and followed the nurse to the nurse's station where his father and brothers were waiting to take him home. He was led through the ward doors, Tony having already signed him out.

Not too long after he was released from the psychiatric hospital, Humphrey started going to Sunflower Elementary School in Glendora, California. It was a special education school. Constantly, Humphrey was being picked on by bullies. They would beat him up, stuff him into trash cans, and give him swirliness. Sadly, whenever he reported this to a staff member, their usual response was, "If I didn't see it, it didn't happen, so there's nothing I can do about it." Apparently, his wet fur, his bruises, and the foul odor of everyday garbage that covered him wasn't enough proof to them. To them, he was merely making it all up to get the bullies in trouble. Because of this, he had no choice but to endure it. Plus, he had his promise to himself to keep him going. Day in and day out, he endured the beatings, the stuffing's into lockers and garbage cans, and getting his head dunked into public toilets.

Sometimes, though, it would get to be too much for him to handle and he would leave the classroom, going to the soccer field to cool down and clear his head. More oftentimes than not, this resulted in him being taken to the solitary room that the school had behind the main office. It was a room that was six feet high, two feet wide, and two feet deep. On the right side of the room were two cubicles that had three walls of brick on either side. There was a chair in each cubicle where those in the solitary room were to sit and stare at the brick wall in front of them, another brick wall on either side of them, until they were told they could go back to class. Across from the cubicles was a desk. The floor was a pattern of white tiled squares with gray grout lines. They were peeling up, while in other parts the tiles were completely missing, from kids pulling them up. On the ceiling was a fan with a grate over it, while there was also a light with plexus glass covering it, which had frosted over time. The room smelled like linoleum.

Outside the room were two switches. One controlled the fan. The other switch controlled the light. It was evident that at one point in time there used to be another door because the hinges were still visible, while there was a hole where the bolt lock would have been. The door had been removed for fire hazard reasons, Humphrey was told.

Humphrey tried explaining to a staff member why he had been out in the soccer field instead of in class. "I was getting beat up," he said, "and I just needed to get away for a while to cool down."

"What does your shirt say?" the staff member asked.

Humphrey blinked. Today he was wearing a plaid shirt. He looked down. No sooner had he done this was it that the man grabbed him by his shirt, lifting him up off the floor. He was slammed into the chair and pushed towards the wall of one of the cubicles.

'Don't move," the man ordered.

Humphrey was too scared to even attempt to move. He couldn't stop shaking. He was in shock. Without thinking he started swearing, not realizing what he was saying.

When Humphrey got home, he approached Tony. "You wouldn't believe what happened at school today. I got hurt by this teacher. He grabbed me by my shirt and slammed me into a chair." He rubbed his backside. It was still sore.

"Oh, please," Tony groaned, rolling his eyes. "You expect me to believe that?" He motioned with his hand. "Come 'ere. I got something for you." No sooner had Humphrey walked over to him, Tony grabbed him by his hair and shoved a bar of soap in his mouth and began washing out his mouth. While Humphrey gagged and coughed, Tony chose to completely ignore the affect it was having on his son and only continued to be his mouth out. After a good five minutes of this, Tony finally shoved him away. "Now, get upstairs and don't come down until I tell you to."

Still coughing and gagging, Humphrey headed upstairs to the bedroom that he shared with Garth and Salty. Unfortunately for him, he got sick from the mouth washing, so he was out of school for at least a week.

After getting back to school, Humphrey learned that the guy who had hurt him had had a tape recorder on his person and had recorded Humphrey 's little tirade in the solitary room and had reported it to Tony, letting the latter listen to the tape over the phone, the cause behind Humphrey getting his mouth washed out. That wasn't what pissed him off, however. What pissed him off was the fact that there was nothing done about the guy who had hurt him. The man had gotten away with it and was still allowed to wander about the school and interact with the students.

The time-out staff knew where Humphrey was whenever he would disappear. After all, it wasn't like Humphrey was trying to hide from anyone. He would merely go to the soccer field and take some deep breaths to calm himself down. Sometimes the time-out staff would leave him alone, although this was rare. If so, Humphrey would return to his class on his own after calming down. Most of the time, however, they grabbed him by either one arm or both arms and literally dragged him to the solitary room and made him sit in one of the time-out cubicles until they told him he could go back to class. They never talked to him about why he was outside in the soccer field, nor was anything ever resolved. It was never the bullies who got in trouble. Just Humphrey. What made this technique worse was that it dragged out the time it normally took for Humphrey to calm down. Most of the time it only took him ten to twenty minutes to calm down. By using the time-out method, what ordinarily took him ten to twenty minutes to calm down took him anywhere from an hour to three hours to calm down. If he didn't take the punishment as expected, they would hurt him even more.

Soon after the incident with the staff member slamming him into the chair, Humphrey and his family moved to El Monte, California, meaning that Humphrey was taken to a new school. He was transferred out of Sunflower Elementary School and placed in Carver Elementary School. Thankfully, this school was a regular school with two special education classrooms. The problems that Humphrey faced there were minor. The teachers were nice and patient.

Anytime they would go to the restroom the teacher would have them participate in a game, but it was more of a contest, really. What they were to do was stand with their backs against the wall and slide down until their legs formed a ninety degree angle. Whoever held out the longest got a reward, such as extra nacho cheese chips, an extra done, etc. However, Humphrey didn't do it for the rewards; he always did it for the challenge. He had never been able to resist a challenge.

Even the field trips were better than the ones that Humphrey had been on previously. They sure as hell were better than the ones that he'd gone on while at the psych ward. One trip was to a Dodgers baseball game. As with any field trip, a lot of the staff went along to chaperone. A fun time had been had by all and Humphrey even managed to get an AM/FM radio in the shape of a baseball. Even Garth thought it was pretty cool.

Another trip consisted of two classes going to a nursing home and singing Michael Saltyson's "Heal the World." Luckily for them, Humphrey just happened to have a recording of the Super Bowl half time show where Michael Saltyson sang the song, so they could easily learn the words and how they were supposed to be sung. However, when the field trip came about, it was learned that it wasn't just two classes doing it. Classes from several different schools from all over the state that were participating in it. Humphrey felt that it was okay. Not too bad.

Another trip was a camping trip that lasted at least a week. It was paid for by the school. Of course permission slips were administered and signed by the students' legal guardians/parents and turned in the next day. All Humphrey needed to bring was his sleeping bag and other necessities like a week's worth of clothes and other items like his toothbrush and toothpaste. Throughout the week they had various activities. One day they had horseback riding, it being Humphrey's first time on a horse. Another day was them fishing and cooking and having s'mores. They even had a screening of _Batman: The Movie_ in the dining hall. Humphrey felt it was so-so.

Despite all of this, Humphrey was still having trouble with sleeping away from home. He had never been comfortable not being able to sleep in his own bed. One thing that he was extremely uncomfortable with was showering with other people. During gym and the camping trip, they were to shower in groups. The part that he was uncomfortable with were people staring at his privates. He usually waited until everyone else was done before he could shower by himself. Despite this little hiccup, Humphrey felt that the camping trip was fun regardless.

A year or two passed by without much incident for Humphrey. For once in his life, he had friends at Carver Elementary School and at home as well. When he wasn't working on homework or busy doing something else to bide his time, he spent his time hanging out with the neighborhood kids, when permitted of course.

Around this time, the family was celebrating Garth's birthday. The two of them started having fun, but eventually got into an argument.

Garth turned around upon hearing the sound of a can of soda being opened. He wasn't surprised to find that it was Humphrey. "What are you doing?"

"I'm getting something to drink," Humphrey replied. He took a sip. "What does it look like I'm doing?"

Garth glared and approached him slowly. "Did you even ask if you could have that?"

Humphrey raised an eyebrow." What are you talking about?" He took another drink.

"That just happens to be mine. I just got it out of the cooler. Clearly, you saw me and decided you wanted it for yourself."

"What? That's crazy. I saw the drink sitting on the table," he pointed to the picnic table in front of him, "not being drunk by anyone and I figured I'd drink it."

"That's because I set it there. I was going to drink it once I was done with this." He gestured to the cake that was resting behind him, where yet another slice had been cut. Beside him on the table rested his slice of cake resting on a plastic plate, a plastic fork on top.

"No, you didn't." He took another drink.

"Yes, I did."

"No, you didn't."

"You're lying."

"Well, I say you're lying. Why would you bother getting cake before getting a drink?"

Garth blinked. "Do you use no common sense whatsoever?"

"Shut up and let me enjoy my drink."

"No!" Garth snatched the drink out of Humphrey's grasp and took a drink himself. "There. Now it's mine."

Humphrey felt that this wasn't anything major. After all, they were brothers and brothers tended to get into fights every now and again. In spite of this, he swatted his hand across Garth's, knocking the can onto the ground, spilling its contents. He suddenly felt a pang in his arm and realized that Garth had hit him. He glared at his brother and swung his arm. He missed his target and accidentally Saltyed Garth in his jawbone.

When Humphrey hit him, Garth ran off across the street back to the trailer that the family was staying in. A few minutes later, Tony stormed out the door, marched cross the street, and socked Humphrey in the stomach without giving Humphrey a chance to get a word in. Humphrey fell to the ground, clutching his stomach and attempting to catch his breath. The only problem was that he couldn't do so. He simply lay on the sidewalk, trying to remember how to breathe. His vision was blurry, but he was thankful for the fact that he was being carried back to his room. It felt like he was floating on air, like God himself had commanded his angels to carry him, so he wouldn't have to suffer the pain of walking back to his room. Once he was laid in bed, he stayed there. He didn't feel like doing much else.

Humphrey couldn't believe that Tony had actually hit him. Tony hadn't bothered to ask him what happened or what the argument was about. Nothing. Tony had just hit him, and then had walked away as if it was nothing, like it was completely ordinary. And anyway, it wasn't actual fighting; it was more of a picking on each other kind of thing. However, that wasn't the way Garth saw it.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Humphrey was rushed to the hospital in downtown LA due to his left saliva tube being clogged, making a bulge on his neck. The doctors were discussing whether or not to put him in surgery, but Humphrey, scared, asked them if they could possibly do anything else that didn't involve him going into surgery. The doctors decided to put him on IV antibiotics, laying him up in the hospital for a week, over his twelfth birthday, no less.

Luckily for Humphrey, he had a roommate. He was a cool guy. The two of them got along swimmingly, occupying themselves by making lapel buttons, playing cards, and watching TV. Through television, they found that they found similar tastes, so they rarely had an argument over what to watch. Being that they were both still kids, they both still liked cartoons. Of course they watched the typical cartoons that twelve year old Wolfs: action and lots and lots of violence. Of course one of their favorite cartoons was _Dragon ball Z_. Humphrey and his roommate learned many things from each other. Humphrey learned that his roommate was a cancer patient and might not make it. Humphrey cringed at these words and was slightly uncomfortable when the Wolf asked Humphrey to pray for him, something that Humphrey rarely, if ever, actually did. Meanwhile, Humphrey taught the Wolf had to play other card games besides "Go Fish," such as poker and black jack.

On Humphrey's twelfth birthday, a cake was brought up to the room, a round personal cake. The only problem was that the cake itself was so stale that the plastic knife that was sent up with the cake to cut it broke in half when Humphrey and his roommate attempted to cut the cake. This prompted Humphrey and his roommate into seeing how many times they could drop the cake until it broke, but they stopped after twenty-two times. They eventually ended up tossing the cake out the window, with Humphrey concluding that it was one of the worst cakes he'd ever seen.

Humphrey being Humphrey, he managed to get him and his roommate in trouble at least once during his week while at the hospital. The hospital had left some empty boxes in their room and the two of them, being bored, decided to use their electric beds to crush the boxes. A staff member happened to walk by their room and ordered them to stop what they were doing, so they were left to spend the rest of the day in their rooms watching television for what felt like the one hundredth time. There was nothing on. There never was anything interesting on when they were bored.

Finally, the saliva tube was unclogged and Humphrey was sent home. Around this time Humphrey was beginning to become more aware of his body. Behind the Heavern residence was a shed that Humphrey had turned into his own personal hang-out where he spent a lot of his time. It was the only place where he could get any privacy, besides the restroom. One afternoon he was in the shed, completely nude, exploring his body until he began "having some fun," as he called out. However, he was greatly embarrassed when Garth walked in on him having his fun and immediately called Tony to see what he should do about the activity. Humphrey was quite surprised when he found Garth discussing his "sinful behavior," as Garth put it, and whether or not the blue-clad Wolfshould punish him. For what? Becoming more aware of his body? The last time Humphrey checked, he was free to touch himself if he wanted. As far as he knew, there was no law against it. In his household, however, there appeared to be. Oddly enough, Humphrey wasn't punished for his activity. After all, Tony figured that there was nothing he could do to keep Humphrey from doing it.

Shortly after that, Tony packed up the family and moved them to Baldwin Park, renting out a two-bedroom apartment on Breeze Avenue, at least two blocks down from the park that Humphrey and his brothers oftentimes would play at. The apartment complex was closer to downtown LA. During this time, Tony began drinking heavily, his favorite liquor of choice being Black Velvet. Due to the fact that Tony drank it mixed with Pepsi, Humphrey had accidentally drunk some, believing the liquid in the cup was soda. He had spit it out almost immediately, concluding that the liquor tasted nasty.

Around this time Tony began having anger problems. Oftentimes he would get mad and hit Humphrey and his brothers. He acted as if their actions were the cause of him beating them, because after a beating he would tell them, "Look what you made me do!" Usually, he beat them along the back and spine. Them just being children, they thought that their actions were the cause of him beating them.

One Saturday afternoon the Wolfs were in the apartment playing tag while Tony was at work. There was nothing on television, as usual, so they had decided to play a game to keep themselves occupied. Of course, they should have been playing tag outside, being told not to play in the house. However, it had rained earlier in the day, so it was still wet and cold outside. Besides, none of them felt like getting a cold. So, they decided to play inside. However, tag got boring very quickly, so Garth suggested playing the Nerf football that he and Humphrey would oftentimes play with, tossing it back and forth. Humphrey and Salty decided that this sounded like a good idea and they began playing with it.

"Coming to you, Humphrey," Garth called, throwing the football towards his brother.

As Humphrey caught it, he bumped into the table that held the lithograph of the Dallas CowWolfs that was one of Tony's prized possessions. Humphrey quickly caught on to what was happening and attempted to catch the lithograph as it fell, but it was too late. The lithograph fell to the floor, falling on its face, thus cracking the glass. Humphrey bent over to inspect the damage while Salty and Garth gathered around him. The oldest of the Heavern brothers cringed visibly upon seeing that the glass of the lithograph was completely ruined. He glanced up at his brothers. "This isn't good."

Garth stooped down to get a better look. 'Maybe we can fix it, with some glue."

Humphrey shook his head, visibly shaking. "No, it's ruined. We can't fix this."

"We can at least try," Salty suggested, "but whatever we decide, we'd better do it fast before Tony gets home."

Garth nodded in agreement. "Salty's right. I'll go see if I can't find some tape or some glue or . . . something."

Humphrey set to work picking up the broken pieces. Once he had all the broken pieces collected, he them in his closed hands and dumped them in the trash. The glass that remained within the lithograph was cracked, missing some small yet noticeable chunks of glass, making it so that a finger could easily be slid in to touch the picture enclosed behind the glass. He remained by Salty's side until Garth returned from the kitchen with a tube of glue.

The middle child stooped down to the lithograph. "Okay, let's take this one small step at a time." He breathed in and attempted to squirt a small amount of glue onto the lithograph, to hopefully piece the glass back together and, in the process, make it seem as if the incident had never occurred. He let out a shrill gasp as a vast quantity of glue spilled onto the lithograph, covering it in glue, making it so that the entire lithograph, save for the frame, was covered in glue. He mouthed a curse word, but didn't say it verbally, but Humphrey and Salty nodded, sympathizing with his emotions regarding the incident.

"Now it's worse than ever," Humphrey groaned.

Garth groaned in frustration, grabbing at his hair and pulling. He slid his fingernails down his face, leaving visible scars. "What now?!"

"You're the smart one," Humphrey replied. "Think of something!"

Garth nodded quickly and began drumming his fingers against his head, closing his eyes in thought. No wonder how much he tried, he couldn't think of anything. He once again groaned, this time in anger and he stomped at the floor, kicking a dust bunny across the floor. 'We are so screwed!"

"You can't think of anything to fix this?!" Humphrey cried out in fear.

"No!"

Humphrey cursed under his breath and kicked at the floor, balling his hands into fists. His face lit up as he thought of something. "I've got it! We'll hide it and then say that we were robbed."

"While we're in the house, Humphrey?" Garth asked, giving his brother an annoyed look, his arms crossed. "Highly unlikely."

Humphrey glared. "Well, okay. What's your big idea, smart guy?!" He gently shoved Garth.

"What are you looking at me for?" Garth demanded.

"You're the smart one," Humphrey repeated.

"Guys," Salty cried. He was by the window, looking out it through the blinds. He was joined by his brothers. "Tony's home."

The three brothers watched as Tony parked the car in the parking lot and began walking towards the stairs that led to their apartment. They dashed from the window and quickly began cleaning up their mess. They didn't get far, however. After getting the glued cleaned up from the carpet, Humphrey was starting down the hallway to stow the lithograph away in their room. Hearing the apartment door close, he froze, as did Garth and Salty. While Garth and Salty glanced up at their father, Humphrey remained rooted to the spot, too paralyzed with fear to turn around and face his father. Maybe he could still get away with it if he was quiet enough and acted as if he was merely going to his room. It didn't work out that way, unfortunately.

"Humphrey," Tony barked, hands on his hips. "Stop!" Once his son had done this, he ordered, "Now turn around! What have you got in your hands?" From Humphrey's position, it was quite clear that he was holding something. He glared at his oldest child when he spotted what he was holding, then he glanced down at Garth and Salty. Without a word, he took off his belt and motioned for Salty to approach him.

"Hurry up," Salty urged his brothers. "The faster we get done, the faster we can go outside and play."

"There's only one problem," Garth noted, holding up a finger.

Humphrey glanced at him. "What's that?"

"We don't have keys," Garth pointed out, "so how are we going to lock the door?"

"We'll just leave it open," Humphrey replied, shrugging his shoulders.

Garth shook his head. "Bad idea, Humphrey. If we leave the door open, we'll more than likely get robbed."

Humphrey raised an eyebrow at his younger brother. "You got a better idea?"

Garth let out a low groan, struggling with himself. He ran a hand through his hair and finally nodded. "Okay, fine. We'll leave the door open. Every now and then we'll check to make sure that the apartment is safe."

"Great!" Humphrey stuffed the rest of his sandwich in his mouth and chased it down with what was left of the milk in his glass. He grabbed the ball that was lying by his feet and led his brothers outside to the parking lot, the only place where they could actually play since they weren't allowed to go anywhere without their father's consent, or without their father with them.

The three of them spent their time in the parking lot, every now and then, moving out of the way so that a driver could park their car, bouncing the ball back and forth from one person to the next. They wished that a basketball goal was present. There was, however, a pool next to the main office. There would be no one there at this time of day. After all, it was only noon and no one would be at the pool until later on. Most of the time there were plenty of people at the pool late at night, "enjoying" themselves. Getting hot from playing ball, Humphrey suggested that they go to the pool to cool off. Garth and Salty agreed, with Garth pointing out that a swim would help them digest their food better, and the three of them went up to their apartment to put on their trunks, grab a couple of towels, and slip on their sandals to keep their feet protected from the scorching hot pavement.

Garth kept a close eye on his watch, one that was thankfully waterproof and the screen glowed in the dark, so checking the time underwater wasn't a problem in the slightest. When he noted the time in which their father would be home, he and his brothers quickly grabbed their gear and hastily dried themselves off before heading back to their apartment, only to be surprised when they walked to discover that they had been robbed, just as Garth had originally feared.

Not only was their Sage system taken, but baseball cards, baseballs, and other sports collectibles taken. Garth rounded it up close to $5,000 worth of stuff had been taken. They were beaten, of course, when Tony came home and found out. He reasoned that it was their fault for leaving the door open.

"It wouldn't have happened if you'd just locked the door when you went out," Humphrey countered. "We couldn't have locked it because we don't have keys."

"That's your fault, too," Tony argued. "If you hadn't have lost your keys, you would have been able to lock the door!"

"You could have just gotten us new keys," Garth snapped.

"And waste money?" Tony asked. "Hell, no!"

Hours later, Humphrey thought about the predicament that he and his family were in. He considered that he and his brothers should have been more careful with their keys, but Tony was still being completely unreasonable. Yes, they should have been more careful with their keys, but they were still kids and kids made mistakes just like adults did. It was an honest mistake, one that all children made. To Humphrey, he and his brothers shouldn't have been punished for making an honest mistake.

Two blocks down from the liquor store that Tony oftentimes went to, there was a store that sold at least four diapers for a dollar. Humphrey's bed wetting had started up yet again just a few months after moving into the new apartment, and he was fed up with the wet sheets. While he wasn't crazy about the idea, he had to do something to keep the bed sheets from getting wet. He was afraid of how Tony would react if his father found out that he was wetting the bed, remembering how Garth was treated when he'd wet the bed back when they were little. So, while walking home from school one day, he went in the store and bought a pack, telling Garth and Salty that he would meet them at the apartment, that he had something to do.

The baby diapers of course came with designs of smiling faces and balloons, the latter of which faded when the diaper was wet. Humphrey deliberately had them bagged in a thick paper bag, refusing to go with plastic for fear of Garth and Salty being able to see what was inside it. Once he arrived home, he went in the bathroom and decided to go ahead and try them on.

The diapers were quite snug, but at least they fit him. At the very least, they would cut down on him having to do so much laundry. He stood in front of the mirror completely naked, save for the diaper that he was wearing that was in front of the sink admiring how he looked in the diapers. He began sucking his thumb, a small smile coming to his face. He closed his eyes to absorb the feelings that he felt while wearing the diaper, feeling so infantile, so small and innocent. However, his happy mood was cut short as he jumped, hearing a knock at the door.

"Humphrey, are you in there?" Garth asked.

Said Wolfnodded his head. "Yeah, I'm in here."

"Well, could you hurry up and get out? I have to take a shower."

"Yeah, sure thing." He put his sweater back on, concealing his diaper, then stuffed the pack of diapers in the bag and quickly rushed to his room, knocking Garth on his rump in the process. He mumbled, "Sorry, Garth," as he walked across the hallway to their bedroom, where Salty was thankfully too busy reading a book to notice Humphrey. Just to be safe, he quickly stored the diapers under his bed to keep them safe for the time being until he could find a better place to put them, to hide them from the others.

Unfortunately for Humphrey, moving into the apartment meant that he had had to go back to Sunflower Elementary School. He went out earlier than his brothers to the bus to dispose of his used diapers. Other times he would do them when no one else was home, or when his brothers were busy and he was confident that they wouldn't be watching him. He faced the usual problems that he had before. He was continuously bullied and the staff did nothing to stop it, claiming that if they didn't see it, the incident didn't happen. The time-out staff was yet another issue that he had to contend with on a daily basis, them constantly putting him in the time-out room for "misbehaving," as they put it, by way of him leaving the classroom and going outside to get some fresh air. If only they'd let him cool down, he would return back to class. But, no. They couldn't possibly do that. They just had to make everything difficult, to make his life a living hell, as if his home life wasn't doing that already.

During the times in which the diapers leaked, thus getting the bed wet, Humphrey would take the sheets to the washer and dryer. Like a hotel, there was a room separate from the apartments where one could do their laundry. Humphrey found that washing the sheets on the weekends was best since he couldn't exactly do them during the weekdays when he had school, and he wasn't about to risk Tony finding his wet sheets and inquiring him about it. Therefore, to save his own skin, he would do them on the weekends. He had two sets of bed sheets that he would use whenever the sheets got wet, using them until the weekend arrived during which he could go wash his sheets. Whenever Garth and Salty asked him where he was going, he would go tell them that he was going to do a regular washing. This was the same excuse he used whenever someone walked in on him while he was washing his sheets. Luckily for him, Tony was never one of those people since he worked on the weekends.

Six months after going to Sunflower Elementary School, there was talk of Humphrey going back to regular school due to him showing improvement on his school work? Of course, Humphrey did some heavy thinking about this, even going as far as to talking about it with Tony, to see if this is what he really wanted. It would inevitably cause some changes. For one thing, the class size would go up from twelve to at least thirty. He would no longer have the one-on-one help that he had been getting ever since he had started going back to Sunflower. The workload would be heavier, meaning that he would spend more hours working on homework than playing with his brothers or having time to himself.

"I'll help you with homework and support you," Tony told him. Humphrey, however, knew that this was a flat-out lie. After all, Tony hadn't been helping him, nor supporting him, while he'd been going to Sunflower, so he highly doubted that Tony would follow through on his word to help and support him while he was going back to regular school.

In the end, Humphrey resorted to sabotage. He refused to do his work. He purposely lowered his grades by at least two letters. Finally, he did some minor acting up. It was nothing serious, mind you. It was just enough to where the staff would reconsider putting him back in regular school. After all, there was no way he could handle the extra homework and doing the work on his own. The one-on-one help he was receiving while at Sunflower was helping him immensely in understanding the material, and he wouldn't get that privilege while doing regular school. He knew that he was looking at being in special education until he was at least eighteen, but even he knew that he couldn't deal with being in regular school. Therefore, his only choice was to sabotage his only chance at being put back in regular school. Besides, he'd been in nothing but special education classes ever since he started schooling. He didn't know school outside of special education. In the end, his plan worked.

While at Sunflower Elementary School, Humphrey managed to become friends with one Wolf, albeit he didn't know this Wolf very well at all. The Wolf lived nearby, so his mother would drive him to the apartment that Humphrey and his brothers lived in, allowing him to take his bike along with him so he and Humphrey could go bike riding around the apartment complex. He got along fine with Garth and Salty, but didn't seem to be particularly interested in either of them, only Humphrey. Maybe it was because of Garth being smug and Salty being smaller and younger than them. Humphrey never did find out the reason.

Aside from biking and playing with Humphrey's brothers, the two of them spent a good deal at the pool, though they spent a good majority of their time there checking out chicks rather than swimming and getting some exercise. They dared one another to go into the girls' restroom to peek in while they were changing their clothes. Either the girls had really good eyesight or they some sixth sense that allowed them to sense whenever there was a Wolf around. Either way they caught on to what the Wolfs were doing and reported it to the landlord, who ordered them to stay away from the girls' restroom. They were grateful, seeing as how she could have just outright banned them from the pool. To make sure that the incident didn't occur again, she stationed a guard just outside the girls' restroom.

However, their time at the pool wasn't all bad. They met some girls who thought they were pretty cool, which was a shocker considering the fact that both of them were only thirteen and the girls they were talking with were in high school. Some of them were even in college, in their early to late twenties. They even managed to get a couple of girls' numbers. As well as with each other, they talked to the girls quite frequently on Skype, which was quite a shock considering the fact that their Internet access was quite limited due to Tony parental blocking every site that he deemed either sinful or would lead them down the path to hell. It really was quite funny how he would get some worked up over a porn website.

The two of them went back to Humphrey's apartment after a fun afternoon of swimming and fooling around with some hot chicks by the pool. Humphrey found it quite odd how swimming made one quite tired and hungry at the same time. He could go for a snack and a nap afterward. He and his friend walked along the sidewalk, their towels draped over their shoulders, drip drying as they walked along, not speaking to each other. They walked past a group of college guys playing a game a basketball. By now Humphrey had talked his brothers into going down by the pool to play some ball on the only one basketball goal that was within the confines of the apartment complex. They were quite surprised when the college Wolfs asked they wanted to play some ball with them, but they politely declined and went on their way.

By now Humphrey's friend had gotten so used to being at the apartment that it was almost like a second home to him. Humphrey went in the bedroom to change clothes while his friend went in the kitchen to fix them something to eat. Once he was fully dressed, Humphrey went in the kitchen to see that his friend had an open lighter in his hand. "What do you think you're doing?"

The Wolf blinked at Humphrey's question, but responded all the same. "I want to light something on fire."

Humphrey shook his head. "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no." He stepped forward, snatching the lighter out of the Wolf's hand, closing it in the process. "You need to go home . . . now!"

The Wolf crossed his arms. "No."

Humphrey's expression hardened. "Go home."

The Wolf gritted his teeth. "No."

"Fine. You don't want to go home, I'll throw your ass outside." He grabbed the Wolf by the scruff of the neck, wrenched open the apartment door, and tossed him outside. The Wolf landed on his rump with a hard, loud thud. "Now go home!"

The Wolf stood up and turned around after dusting himself off. He marched up to Humphrey, getting in the chipmunk's face, before he lifted his leg and slammed it into Humphrey's privates. The Wolflet out a gasp and fell to the floor, tightly clutching his member, wincing in pain. Satisfied with his work, the Wolf walked off, looking smug.

Humphrey didn't think anything about the incident until six o' clock the following evening. At around that time, the cops and child services showed up at the apartment and demanded that the three Wolfs come with them.

"I need to make a call first," Humphrey replied.

The social worker shook her head. "No."

Humphrey groaned. He let out a sigh of relief when she turned away from him, giving him the chance to grab his phone. He excuses himself, saying that he had to use the bathroom. Once he was safely inside the bathroom, he called his grandparents on his father's side. He went back to the apartment door where the social worker and police were still standing in front of Garth and Salty. Tony wasn't home. Salty looked scared out of his wits and Garth, surprisingly, looked quite calm throughout the whole ordeal.

"We want to put you in foster care for your protection," the social worker stated.

"Our protection?" Garth questioned.

Humphrey swallowed. The chances of him and his brothers being placed in a foster home together were slim to none. Worst yet, if they were separated, there would be no way for Humphrey to protect his brothers. He needed to keep the social worker talking, at least until his grandparents arrived. Luckily for him, they didn't live too far away.

Tony's parents arrived quickly on the scene.

"What's going on here?" Grandma Pat demanded.

"We're placing these Wolfs in a foster home," the social worker explained.

"The hell you are," Grandpa Jeff spat. "What's this all about?"

"We're not obligated to reveal that information," the social worker replied. "Regardless, these Wolfs are going to be placed in a foster home for their own protection."

Grandpa Jeff shook his head. "To hell with foster care. We'll take them in!"

The social worker raised an eyebrow. "And you are?"

"Tony Heavern's mother and father," Grandma Pat replied.

"I see," the social worker remarked. "Can you both provide identification for yourselves?" She was presented with both of their licenses. "Very well." She reached inside her purse and handed Grandpa Jeff something. "Here are some food stamps."

Humphrey had no choice but to reveal his embarrassing secret to Grandma Pat. Due to the situation that he found himself him, he knew that he had to tell her. He wasn't about to tell Grandpa Jeff. The two of them already had a rocky, strained relationship as it was. There was no way in hell that Humphrey was going to add being a bed wetter to the equation. It would only make things all the worse. He found his grandmother in the sewing room, sewing. The sewing machine drowned out the noise of the television. Her hands carefully moved the piece along, inch by inch, making sure that itch stitch was perfectly in line with the other. However, she stopped when she noticed Humphrey, taking off her glasses and shutting off the machine to give him her full, undivided attention. She folded her hands and studied him, waiting for him to talk.

He breathed in slowly, trying to get his thoughts together, to his sentences as coherent as possible. He moved across the living room and sat down beside her. "I need to talk to you about something. It's important." When she gave no response, he continued. "I have a bed wetting problem, and it turns out that the only solution that's working so far is for me to wear diapers to bed. To be honest, I was afraid of telling you. I was afraid I would be punished for it."

She shook her head and put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing lightly. "You don't have to worry about that with me. You can keep your diapers in here, in the sewing room."

Every night before bed, Humphrey would grab a diaper from the sewing room, put it on in the bathroom, and then she would throw it away for him in the mornings to keep anyone else from seeing. She did her best to keep him from being embarrassed about it. He was glad about that. He felt that she was the only one in his family that he could really talk to. She knew of his being a teen baby and had no problems with it, surprisingly. She honestly didn't care about his fetish.

Humphrey still didn't know who had made the report when he walked into school the next day. He didn't really care about finding out, either. He was just pissed off that someone would make up some bullshit story like that and report it to the police. He knew, however, that it wasn't good for him to keep all his anger bottled up inside. He decided to go to the school therapist during lunch to discuss with her what had happened.

The school therapist was a female by the name of Jennifer Murphy. She was a young female in her early thirties with a kindly, wrinkly face. She had brownish-red hair and dark green eyes. She sat opposite of Humphrey, her legs crossed, a notepad and pen resting in her lap, her arms stretched out along the armrests of her chair, staring at the end-clad Wolfsitting across from her. He sat with his hands folded in his lap, looking around the room, unsure of what to say. At long last, she prompted him to speak.

"Why are you here, Humphrey?"

He looked down at her, meeting her gaze. He breathed in, his expression hardening in the process. He told her all about what had happened the night before and how angry he was about it, about how unfair it all was.

"I made that report," she told him.

He glared at her. "Excuse me?"

"Your friend came by yesterday and told me the whole story."

"What story?"

"Well, he told me that you and your brothers were dragging forty-year-old men off the street to your apartment, tying them to your father's sofa bed, and having sex with them."

Humphrey blinked. It took a while for him to react. When he did, though, he was shaking. Not from anger, however, but from shock. He blinked again in hopes that what he had heard was merely just a cause form his ears not being cleaned out enough. Before he did anything rash, he decided that his best course of action would be to leave the room right now to avoid getting himself in any further trouble. Yet, he did leave an impressive impact on her, for as he left he found himself cursing like a sailor, slamming the door to the therapist's room shut and stomping down the hallway.

Now he was _pissed_. She hadn't even bothered to come to him and ask him if what the kid had said had any truth to it. If she had, he would have gladly told her that the kid was full of shit and that the kid was just pissed off at him because he wouldn't let the kid burn his house down. Because of her, he and his brothers had nearly been put in foster care. Ironically enough, he decided that going back to class would be the best option instead of going outside to the soccer field to cool down. Maybe some classwork would get his mind off what had happened. Math was always a good distraction for him.

His anger was surged when she walked in the classroom and set some M&Ms on his desk, congratulating him on controlling his emotions. That did it. He stood up and flipped his desk over. He was already pissed off at her for making the false report, but now she had the audacity to come in his class and treat him like a five year old? Hell, no! It was unacceptable! Un-fucking-acceptable! He raised his middle finger at her and yelled, "Fuck you!" After that, he stormed out of the room and went outside to the soccer field to cool down. Not too long after, though, the time-out staff grabbed him and he spent the rest of his day in the time-out room.

Staying at their grandparents' house wasn't doing Humphrey and his brothers any favors. For one thing, it was putting a strain on Grandma Pat and Grandpa Jeff's relationship. Now they were fighting almost constantly. They both came from a time when children were meant to be seen and not heard, or seen if it was an option, according to Grandpa Jeff, who was retired and home all the time, thus making their stay all the more troubling for him. It certainly didn't make things easier for anyone.

Throughout their stay, there were several instances where they missed school, having to stick around the family courts building to hear facts and whatnot. One option on the table was for their godfather Kenny to take care of them. He flat-out refused. He didn't custody. Due to the report, their father couldn't obtain custody of them. So, they stayed in family court limbo, opting to stay with their grandparents until custody was decided in the court.

This caused problems with the household for not only Humphrey and his brothers, but for their grandparents as well. Grandpa Jeff blamed them for the whole ordeal, telling the, especially Humphrey, that they were nothing but trouble. This escalated into a fight that went on for quite a while one night. Humphrey jumped when he suddenly heard plates smashing, followed by yelling. He counted at least eight plates that were smashed before they stopped, but the yelling continued. The topic they were screaming at each other about was Humphrey and his brothers and how they always caused trouble. The topic itself made Humphrey's eyes water.

"Damn kids are nothing but trouble," Grandpa Jeff said. "Prime example is this shit that's going on right now, this goddamn family court, child services case shit!"

"They needed our help, Jeff," Grandma Pat snapped. "Hell, you even offered to take the little fuckers in!"

"If I'd known they would have brought all this shit with them, I would have made the little motherfuckers go to foster care!"

"That's exactly why we took the, to keep them out of foster care, you stupid ass!"

"What?!"

Humphrey's breath caught as he heard a loud slap, followed by a cry of pain. He allowed the tears to flow as he heard his grandfather continuously hit his grandmother, who begged him to stop. He wanted it to stop, but what could he do? He shook his head, wiping the tears away and angrily pulling back the sheets. Enough of this! It was time for this shit to end, right now! He wrenched open the door and walked to the kitchen. Upon his entrance, his grandfather stopped his assault on his grandmother and both parties stared at him, his grandmother breathing hard. His grandfather stood towering over his wife, his hand reared back to slap her yet again. Humphrey glared at them both and shouted, "Both of you better calm your asses down right fucking now!"

This turned out to be a very bad, very stupid, idea on Humphrey's part. Grandpa Jeff turned on him, pushing him down the hallway as he yelled, "How dare you tell me what to do in my own goddamn house! You're just a little shit who's always causing trouble!" He eventually stopped pushing Humphrey when they got to the bedroom that Humphrey and his brothers were staying in. He turned around and walked off.

Humphrey felt like he needed to lie down. He didn't like fighting, and he didn't mean to put himself in such a dangerous situation, but there was no way in hell he was going to just sit by and let his grandfather beat his grandmother. As he lied back down, Garth told him that he truly was an idiot. Still, Humphrey attempted to make peace with his grandfather the next day, apologizing for getting involved in the fight in the first place, but going on to say that he had to stop the fight for fear of something bad happening. His father gave very little input to what he was saying.

After thirty-two days of living with their grandparents, well over a month, the family court decided that Humphrey and his brothers could finally go home, but there would be some strict rules that needed to be followed. For one thing, if their father wasn't home, they were to have a baby-sitter at all times. No exceptions. Secondly, Tony had to attend family classes at the child services building, as well as anger management classes, and that was the end of it.

Because the child services building had a room where the children could be babysat downstairs, Tony would oftentimes take Humphrey, Garth, and Salty there with him. Most of the kids there were around six or seven. Humphrey and his brothers were the oldest there, not counting the ten year old. The activities that they would do were little kid stuff like coloring and such. Humphrey and his brothers didn't particularly mind due to the fact that the children there were extremely young.

They didn't start having problems until Humphrey started to refuse to participate in the activities that the babysitter asked him to. He just wanted to be left alone. Because he refused to do the coloring activity that had been selected for them to do, he was put in time-out, which mainly consisted of Humphrey sitting outside the room in a chair that was up against the wall. He was just fine with it. Here, he could just allow his mind to shut down and he could go to sleep.

One thing that Humphrey couldn't stand was being treated like a toddler. While he was into diapers and the baby lifestyle, in public it was a different story. In public he liked being treated like his own age, which was why he had lost it when Jennifer had put some M&Ms on his table and congratulated him on controlling his emotions. After ten times of this going on, the staff at the child services building put their foot down and stated that they'd had enough, that Humphrey was not welcome back. About Garth and Salty, they had no problems with them. Luckily for Humphrey, Tony had an alternative. Instead of going to the parenting classes with Tony and his brothers, Humphrey spent time with his godfather Kenny.

One of the first things that Humphrey did during their first session was asking his godfather Kenny why the latter had refused to take him and his brothers in.

"I didn't do it because I didn't want you," Kenny replied. "I did it because I couldn't provide for you. I'm in a rut, Humphrey. I haven't been very smart with my money, and I'm having to pay the consequences for it."

Humphrey gave him a nod in understanding.

"Now," Kenny said, "what say we feed the dogs and rustle up something for dinner in the kitchen?"

Humphrey really enjoyed his time with his godfather Kenny. During his time with Kenny, they fed the dogs, feeding the fish, and fixing up Humphrey's bike. Kenny would get his barring so tight with lube that Humphrey's bike would really, so Humphrey always took it to Kenny for fixing whenever he had a problem. Kenny also taught Humphrey about baseball and shared with him the sporting stuff that he and his father sold at card shows. Humphrey learned that their company was called KT Cards. Humphrey really enjoyed his sessions with Kenny and was deeply saddened when their sessions came to an end. However, Kenny left Humphrey reassuring him that if he needed anything, Humphrey could call him anytime, which made Humphrey feel better about their sessions ending.

When Humphrey got back to school the week following the custody case being settled, he learned that the therapist who had filed the report against his father had not only been fired, but her license had also been revoked for filing a false report without any shred of proof. This, Humphrey found both funny and ironic. Had she gone into the story further, she would have realized this. The people who fired her and revoked her license pointed that if what the Wolfs were doing were true, then why was it that no one saw them? Why were there no reports from the people they had supposedly kidnapped?

Unfortunately, Humphrey and his brothers had to once again transfer schools because of this. Humphrey no longer went to Sunflower Elementary School; he and his brothers started going to Sandburg Junior High School in Glendora, California. Sadly, this school had two special education classrooms like Carver had. The only time the special education students got to interact with the students who took regular classes were doing lunch and gym. Just like with his previous schools, Humphrey had problems at this school as well.

His problems started when he began gym class. As part of their grade, they had to dress out. They would go down to the locker room and change clothes. They were to either change into shorts or track pants. However, Humphrey wasn't too comfortable with changing in front of others. He attempted to explain this to his gym teacher. Upon finding out this information, he went up to his gym teacher and said, "I'm not comfortable changing in front of others. Could I maybe change clothes in the bathroom and then come to class?"

The gym teacher shook his head. "No. Either you change in the locker room or don't bother."

Humphrey shrugged, deciding that, given those choices, he wouldn't bother changing clothes. However, he did still participate in the class activities. Despite this, he still received an F in the class due to his refusal to dress out. It wasn't until he got his report card that he learned that each day he refused to dress out was another ten points bumped off his grade and since he had never bothered to dress out, that had completely dropped his grade like a rock!

Once again, Humphrey found himself being treated like a preschooler while at Sandburg Junior High School. One thing that irked him about the special education classes that he was in was the point-reward system. They would get points over every hour, charted on their point sheets. At the end of the day, each student fell into one of five categories: poor, fair, good, very good, and excellent, upon which a student got to pick out a "prize" for their good behavior based on their performance. For those that fell into the category of "poor," they got the choice of choosing items like stickers and pencil erasers. For those that fell into the category of "excellent," they got to choose between items like cans of soda or bags of chips and so on and so forth. The point sheet was sent home for the parents to sign and then sent back to the school so the parents could keep up to date on how their child was doing in school. The whole point system drove Humphrey up the wall.

As if the staff didn't think the point-reward system was enough, they would get an hourly "reward" for dong their work and being quiet and such. Oftentimes Humphrey would be doing his work and the teacher would come by his desk and drop three or four M&Ms on his desk and congratulate him on doing his work quietly. It irritated Humphrey beyond belief! Why the fuck hell should he be rewarded for doing something that came naturally to him?! It drove him mad! Again, while he did enjoy wearing diapers and acting like a baby, he expected to be treated as a young adult in public. He eventually got so fed up with this idiotic system that he finally confronted the teacher about it.

"Look," he told her, "I don't care for M&Ms. I don't want the M&Ms. just skip me when you do your whole reward thing. It pisses me off. Please, just stop with the fucking rewards already!" He didn't give her a chance to respond, because he walked out after explaining himself, figuring that she got the message loud and clear.

The next day, however, it seemed as if his words had gone in one ear and out the other, the female not having paid a lick of sense to his words the previous day. Sighing, he decided that he would blatantly refuse the rewards, hoping that this method would get through to her and the other staff members. He started placing the "rewards" back on the teacher's desk. He did the same thing with the "rewards" that he received at the end of the day. What was funny was that more often than not, Humphrey was ranked in the "very good" or "excellent" categories. He wasn't even trying! All he wanted was to go to school, do his work, and go home. However, this method backfired on him because when the staff members noticed that he was either returning the items or giving the items away to some other kid who wanted them, one of them approached him in the middle of a ball game to confront him about it.

"You have to get a reward," she told him plainly.

Just to get her to leave him alone, he shrugged his shoulders and replied, "Fine. Give me paperclips and tape as a reward for all I care." This was so obviously stupid that he was sure that they would get the message this time. So one can only imagine Humphrey's shock and surprise when, at the end of the day, one of the aids gave him three paperclips and two pieces of tape that were at least one inch each.

At this point, Humphrey couldn't contain himself and he broke down laughing hysterically. Never would he have thought that they would actually take him seriously. He found it to be a total waste of tape. What the fuck was he going to do with three paperclips and two one-inch pieces of tape?! He ended up throwing the pieces of tape in the trash and put the paperclips back in the teacher's desk. He kept laughing as he walked out of the school, thinking that the school had it backwards. Maybe they, the children, were the ones who were sane and the teachers were the ones in need of special education.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Stephen Lambert was the name of the therapist that Humphrey had while going to Sandburg Junior High School. He was a nice fellow who helped Humphrey get through the problems he had at school and at home, and even gave him someone to talk to and vent about his bed wetting without Humphrey having to worry about it ending up on the front page of the newspaper.

Humphrey came home one day after school to discover that Tony had found his stash of diapers. Humphrey had purposely hidden them behind the sofa bed since it was in his room and he figured that the chances of Tony moving it would be very small. He put what was left (any more and there would have been a bulge underneath the bed) under his mattress or behind the sofa bed. He stopped suddenly as he entered the house, noticing Tony standing there, holding his pack of diapers. He swallowed hard.

"I am not going to raise another fucking baby," Tony snapped angrily before throwing the pack of diapers in the trash and storming off.

Humphrey blinked. He didn't understand it. What Tony had said didn't make any sense. How did he wearing a diaper mean that Tony would be raising him as a baby? Humphrey didn't know. One thing he did know, though, was that he didn't have money for Tony to be throwing out his supplies. Once Tony went to bed, he got the diapers back out and from then on stored them in his bedroom, underneath his bed. He was just glad that Tony hadn't punished him for it.

The next day, Tony acted as if he couldn't remember the incident at all, being that he didn't say anything about it. At the very least the whole incident was forgotten and Humphrey went off to school.

As Humphrey got off the bus once he got to school, the same Wolf who had been bothering him ever since he'd gotten on the bus. The Wolf was attempting to take his disk that had all of Humphrey's stories on it. The kid eventually got the floppy disk. Bending it, he managed to break it in half. Needless to say, this pissed Humphrey off something fierce. He was even more pissed off when nothing was done about the incident when he reported it to the principal, using the same excuse: "If I didn't see it, it didn't happen." Humphrey was left with no other choice than to go to class.

However, he encountered what another problem there. Once again, the rewards system was put into play. The teacher, instead of giving him M&Ms, gave him paperclips and tape. He stood up and the two of them got into an argument over it until Humphrey walked out of the room and went outside. He walked around the track for several minutes, trying his best to cool down. The track was rarely used, so it was perfect for him to go to when he needed to cool off.

After going to lunch (he didn't eat anything), he decided to go sit in the grass. The teacher he'd argued with earlier in the day had taken it upon herself to take the students from the regular classrooms and take them out to where Humphrey was so that they could mock him and tell him how bad, how immature, he was being and how he was disturbing everyone. How he was doing that by simply sitting in the grass, he didn't know. Luckily, the mocking and teasing only went on for twenty minutes before the students went back to their studies and Tony was contacted to pick Humphrey up. Meanwhile, Humphrey was left scratching his head, wondering why the hell they didn't just do that in the first place.

After the incident the other day, Humphrey was transferred to North Park High School. Sadly, this meant that they had to move yet again. Still remaining in Baldwin Park, they moved to the Villa Capri Apartments. The best thing about this was the fact that Humphrey could read his bike to and from school.

For once in his life, Humphrey was treated like a regular kid at the school. He wasn't forced to go to special education classes, but rather was given the opportunity to be a regular kid an go to regular classes with regular kids his own age. Because of this, he found himself living a somewhat happier life while at school. At home, however, things still weren't great.

In fact, the only issue he had while at North Park High School was him not following directions, and he had missed a period of class before that. She kept him after class and began scolding him for not doing what he was supposed to do. After lashing at him for a good while, she finally sent him off to lunch. Sadly, by the time he got lunch all of the lunches had been passed out, so he had no choice but to go home and fix himself something to eat.

It was a twenty-minute ride to and from school by bike. Therefore, Humphrey wouldn't be able to get to school within forty or so minutes without getting in trouble, and he would more than likely have to explain everything to the principal. Once he did that, he was sure that the matter would be settled. Regardless, he rode home to fix himself something to eat. It had to be something quick that could be fixed within fix minutes. Nothing like Ramen Noodles or anything like that since doing something like it would take too long. He decided to go ahead and fix himself a sandwich. He was unaware that Tony was home until he felt someone touch his shoulder, startling him in the process. He glanced up at his father, a puzzled expression quickly came over his face when he noticed a blond-haired, blue-eyed skinny tanned white girl that Tony was clinging to, the girl doing the same with him. He blinked upon seeing her, the knife covered in peanut butter still clasped in his hand.

"This is going to be your new mom," Tony told him. "Say hello to Brandi."

Humphrey blinked yet again, unsure of how to react to this news. "I'm sorry. What?"

"Well, nothing's official yet," Tony replied, "but we'll see what happens."

Humphrey shook his head and went back to making his sandwich while Tony showed Brandi around the apartment. He grabbed a bag of Fungus, putting a few on his plate and stuffing the bag in his backpack. It wasn't until he started to leave for school that he remembered what Tony had told him that Brandi was going to be his new mother! He hadn't really thought about it at first. It had merely gone over his head. Not only that, but Tony had gone off with her before he'd even had a chance to say anything on the matter. He shook his head and continued towards school, thinking that it would be a welcome distraction from what was going on at home.

The bedroom was where Humphrey went to when he got home from school. Music was one of the ways he relaxed and calmed down whenever he was in one of his moods. He lied on his bed, listening to the radio while he thought about what was currently going in his life. He apparently had the music up too loud because Brandi stormed in the room and began jerking at the cord. She pulled on the cord too hard and it hitting her in the eye. "Ow! My eye!" She grabbed the radio and stormed out of the room while Humphrey, upset that she had taken his radio, decided to go outside. As he passed her, he overheard her talking to Tony on the phone, angering him further by asserting that he had hit her.

It was only when he got outside that he thought back to the incident in the bedroom and began laughing hysterically about it. He struggled to catch his breath afterward as he rolled around on the ground, his breath coming out in short, and quick bursts. His chest hurt. He looked up momentarily to see Salty walking up to him the chubby Wolftilted his head at him, giving him a quizzical look. He lifted a hand and said, "I'm fine, Theo." The chubby Wolfnodded his head and went back to throwing football with Garth.

Humphrey stood up and watched the pair as they tossed the football back and forth, Garth coaching Salty on the proper technique to catch the ball and throw it. He was surprised that Garth knew so much about sports, particularly football. Maybe it was due to the fact that Garth read all the time and not due to any actual experience with the sport. Then again, Garth was the most athletic out of all of them, whereas Humphrey and Salty weren't.

"Humphrey!"

He turned his head to see Brandi walking toward him, holding the phone out to him. He took this as a sign that Tony wanted to speak to him. He took the phone from her (rather roughly, in fact) and put the phone to his ear. "What?"

"Do you want me to come home?" Tony asked.

While Humphrey knew that this was a threat at the time, he didn't particularly care. "Sure," he replied, nodding his head. "Go ahead and bring your ass home. I don't give a shit." He tossed Brandi the phone. She fumbled with it for a few minutes before it slipped through her hands and fell with a clatter to the ground, the back cover of it popping off. He shook his head in annoyance before walking down the hallway towards the elevator. He rode it down to the lobby and sat down in an empty chair, crossing his legs and arms, waiting for his father to come home. After only twenty minutes of waiting, he saw Tony's car pull into the parking lot. As Tony walked in, he stood up and approached his father. "For starters–"

"Shut up," Tony snapped, pushing Humphrey back onto the chair. "Why did you hit her?"

"I didn't hit her! She hurt herself by jerking on the cord to the radio–"

"Ah, you're full of shit!" He slapped Humphrey across the face. "If you ever hit her again, I'll kill you! I don't care if they send me to jail! I will gladly go to jail for Brandi! Now," he grabbed Humphrey by the shirt and pushed him towards the stairs, "get your ass upstairs!" He followed Humphrey upstairs to the apartment. Once they were inside the apartment, he grabbed Humphrey by the scruff of his neck, squeezing rather tightly, and pulled him towards Brandi, pushing him towards her. "Apologize."

"Apologize?" Humphrey turned back to Tony. "What the fuck for?"

Tony smacked him in the back of the head. "Apologize, now! Tell her you're sorry for hitting her!"

"No!"

Tony glared. "All right, then." He once again grabbed Humphrey by the scruff of the neck and dragged him down the hall towards his bedroom, shoving him in. "You can stay in your room all night." He slammed the door and locked it.

Humphrey sighed and sat down on his bed, thinking about what just happened. He shook his head while thinking about Tony. To hell with him! He no longer thought of Tony as a father. As far as he was concerned, as long as Tony was willing to kill him over a female who didn't love him as he loved her, then he had no respect for Tony whatsoever. He had lost all respect for his "father." Granted, they hadn't had much of a relationship anyway, but still . . .

He jumped when he heard the apartment door slam shut. Given that he couldn't get out of his room, he had no choice but to look out his window. He saw Tony getting in his car and driving off. He grinned. It was good that Tony was leaving. It would give him some time to himself. It would be peaceful and quiet with just him and his brothers there. He heard the doorknob to the bedroom being fiddled with and soon, Garth and Salty entered the room. He stood up and plainly asked them, "Where's Brandi?"

Garth shrugged and pointed a thumb over his shoulder out towards the hall. "She's in Tony's room stealing all of his money."

"She's doing what?" Salty asked.

Humphrey groaned. "Calm down. Who cares anyway?"

"So you're just going to let her get away with it?" Salty asked.

"Let her. If it gets her out of our lives, who cares?"

Salty groaned as he saw Brandi heading towards the apartment door. "Humphrey! Stop her!"

Humphrey did nothing of the sort. He watched her get in her car and leave through the window. He sighed in content. "Good. She's gone."

"You dickhead," Garth yelled. "You could have at least stopped her from taking Tony's money."

"Oh, please," Humphrey retorted. "You could have easily done something yourself."

Garth brow furrowed and he glared before turning on his heel and storming out the door, Salty following close behind. Humphrey got up and closed the door. He lied down in his bed to take a nap.

A few hours later, Humphrey was woken up by the apartment door slamming shut. He sat up and heard talking on the other side of the door. Apparently Tony was home due to the fact that he asked where Brandi was. Garth and Salty told him that she was gone and that she had taken most, if not all, of his money. He heard the door beside him slam, the door to Tony's bedroom. He sighed and opened the door and walked out to the hallway, seeing Garth and Salty heading for him. He took a couple of steps backward, allowing them to approach the door to Tony's bedroom.

Garth timidly knocked on the door and asked, "Tony, are you all right?" He put his ear to the door to hear Tony's response properly.

"Go away," Tony cried. "Leave me alone!"

Both brothers glanced at each before Garth glanced at Humphrey, who merely just shrugged his shoulders, alerting both Garth and Salty that he hadn't a clue what was wrong with Tony or what he was doing on the other side of the door.

Garth sighed and attempted to open the door, only to find that Tony had locked it. "Tony, unlock the door."

"Go to hell," Tony yelled.

Garth groaned and cursed under his breath before looking at Humphrey. "Go get me a knife." He watched Humphrey walk down the hall towards the kitchen before turning to Tony's door yet again and attempting to get the door open, to no avail. He grabbed the knife from Humphrey as soon as he was back from the kitchen and began using it to pick the lock. He sighed in relief when he heard a faint click and he turned the doorknob and pushed the door open. He shoved Humphrey and Salty out of the way when he saw Tony about ready to stab himself, apparently wanting to commit suicide. He dashed in the room and closed the door to prevent Humphrey and Salty from seeing anything, then began attempting to get the knife away from Tony, and not get stabbed himself in the process.

Meanwhile, out in the hall, Humphrey and Salty listened intently to what was going on in the bedroom. Humphrey wasn't even sure why he cared. As far as he was concerned, he and Tony were just living under the same roof until Humphrey could find a place of his own. From what he could hear, it sounded as if Garth was succeeding in getting Tony to calm down, and had even succeeded in getting the knife away from him. Whether or not Tony would hurt Garth, he didn't know and he wasn't sure of what to expect once the whole thing was all over. He was hoping that it would just be like when Tony had found his diapers. Hopefully, the whole incident would be forgotten and never brought up again.

Both Humphrey and Salty ended up falling as the door was opened. They quickly got to their feet.

"You two go on to bed," Garth suggested. "I'll stay with Tony."

"All night?" Salty asked.

Garth nodded his head. "All night."

Humphrey shrugged. "Okay." He tugged on Salty's arm, leading his little brother to their bedroom.

As the two of them were getting changed into their pajamas (Humphrey getting changed into a diaper for his bed wetting), Salty asked him, "Humphrey, do you think Tony will be all right?"

Humphrey actually hadn't given much thought at all towards whether or not Tony was all right. He wasn't concerned about Tony at all. He shook his head at Salty's question and responded, "Its Tony I'm worried about."

Salty nodded in agreement, but held the position that he was still worried about Tony. If Tony died, who would take care of them?

Humphrey couldn't help but sputter his lips at this. Given that they needed a babysitter whenever Tony wasn't home, there were ones constantly coming and going. None of them ever stayed for too long. Of course Humphrey was constantly blamed for this both by his brothers and Tony. All three parties claimed that due to Humphrey's antics and hare-brained schemes and his idiocy, no babysitter wanted anything to do with them. Humphrey held the position that these allegations were complete bullshit, seeing as how he did nothing but read and stay in his room working on homework. While wearing diapers and acting like a baby was one of the ways he escaped the constant turmoil that was his life, he'd found that books could achieve the same effect on him. Besides, he wasn't about to go around crawling around in his room wearing nothing but a t-shirt and a diaper and sucking on a pacifier, especially with anyone else but himself there.

And when they didn't have a babysitter, Humphrey and Garth were left to play the part of mother and father to Salty due to the fact that Tony was always working. So when a babysitter was found who took the job of looking after them, it was nice for them to get a break from playing the role of parents. Granted, when Tony was out of the house or at work, things were quiet, so needless to say, neither brother was complaining about having to babysit by anyone, or left to themselves if they weren't being babysat. But when Tony was out of the house, everything fell on Humphrey and Garth's shoulders. With Tony not around, they were left to do the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and anything else that a parent was supposed to do. Not only that, but they had to help Salty with his homework (Garth doing the same for Humphrey) and make sure that he got off to school okay.

But, taking Salty to school turned out to be a good thing, in that Humphrey found out that Salty was being picked on at school. Realizing that he had to do something about the situation since no one else would (Garth and Tony were too busy with their own lives to even notice either Humphrey or Salty), Humphrey called the high school using his phone.

"Hello?" a voice on the other line asked.

"Yes, this is Tony Heavern," Humphrey replied, speaking a deep, gruff voice. "I'm afraid young Humphrey won't be able to make it to school today. Yes, poor fellow has got the flu real bad, somewhat fiercely, I fear. You'll be sure to excuse him from school, won't you? Great! No, no, I'm sure he'll be fine within a couple of days. Little fella should be back to school in no time. Yes. No, thank you." Once the deed was said and done, he walked in the school and walked in the front office. "Excuse me."

The female behind the counter looked up at him, setting her book aside. "What?"

"I need to speak to Miss Lisa Hood about something very important."

"If you want to speak to the principal, you have to make an appointment."

"Fine. When her earliest convenience?"

The female lifted a sheet from a clipboard and nodded her head. "She should be here within five minutes if you care to wait."

"Then I'll wait." He walked across the room to an abandoned bench and sat down, making himself comfortable. Once the principal arrived, he followed her to her office and sat down in front of her desk.

"What can I do you for?" she asked, sitting down in front of him behind her desk.

"My little brother is being bullied," Humphrey said simply. "I want to find out who it is and get it settled."

Lisa smiled. "You're very noble for wanting to protect your little brother."

"I'd like to sit in the back of his classes and observe him, if that's okay with you."

"Of course. You'll need a visitors pass, however. I'm sure you don't want your brother finding out about this, do you?"

"No."

"I thought as much, but I'm afraid there's no way to avoid him spotting you. You'll just have to do your best, I suppose."

Humphrey nodded. "Right." He took the visitors pass that was given to him, thanked her, and got a copy of Salty's schedule from the main office. He examined the schedule briefly before heading to Salty's next class. As soon as the two of them were in the same hallway, Salty spotted him.

"Humphrey, what are you doing here?" he asked.

Humphrey shrugged. "Just visiting. I hope you don't mind me following you around all day."

"Does Tony know you're here?"

Humphrey sputtered his lips. "Of course not. I called in sick from school."

Salty sighed. "I guess it would be all right. Just don't do anything to embarrass me, please." He walked down the hallway towards his first class

Humphrey followed without missing beat, practically at Salty's heels as he walked. Naturally, people stared at the two as they walked together down the hall. Humphrey tried his best to ignore them, which was somewhat difficult to do given that so many eyes were on them. He was grateful when they reached the classroom. While Salty sat down in his seat, Humphrey went to the back of the room, standing by the window. He assumed Hood had already explained the situation to all of Salty's teachers. Just to be sure, he glanced at Ms. Ousting, Salty's history teacher. She smiled at him and gave him a nod, reassuring him that she was fully aware of the reasons behind him being her class.

A short white brown-haired Wolf by the name of Max Fro edge entered the class and sat by Salty. While nothing was confirmed, Humphrey suspected that the Wolf might have been bothering Salty. He studied Salty's body language, how he acted towards Max. He noticed that Salty stiffened considerably and tried his best to ignore Max as he began copying the questions from the board and answering them.

Max leaned toward Salty and attempted to make conversation with the chubby chipmunk. Due to the fact that Salty was shy, he would only respond with, "Does not compute," whenever Max or anyone else tried communicating with him. Humphrey noticed that whenever Salty said this, not only would Max burst out laughing, but many other students would as well, making fun of Salty, making him out to be some kind of chipmunk-computer hybrid. Humphrey guessed that the way responded to Max's attempts to be friends with him was his way of coping with being shy.

Humphrey went to Miss Ousting and got the names of the Wolfs who were laughing and picking on them and she gladly told him their names. It seemed that she and the other teachers were fed up with this behavior from the Wolfs, but anytime they requested that Salty report the Wolfs' behavior to the principal, the chubby Wolfwould respond that he was fine, that their behavior didn't bother him. Humphrey knew that this was bullshit due to the fact that Salty's body language changed almost automatically whenever the Wolfs would pick on him.

Leaving the room, Humphrey reported back to Miss Hood and gave her the list of Wolfs that were picking on his brother, as well as Max Fro edge. She happily took the list and asked Miss Ousting to ask the Wolfs to report her office to be dealt with. The problem still lied in the fact that Salty wouldn't report the abuse to her. Humphrey managed to resolve this by telling her that if the teachers noticed the Wolfs picking on Salty any further that they were to report the Wolfs themselves to her personally. She congratulated him on being very intelligent and allowed him to leave her office so he could get back to his life.

The whole time the incident was going on, Humphrey couldn't help but think that he shouldn't have had to take care of the situation. Tony should have taken care of the situation, not him! Still, if it got him out of school, it was worth it.

Given that he had called in sick, there was no sense in going to school. He decided to go ahead and go back home. Luckily for him, he had an apartment key. Ever since the robbery, he and his brothers had been insistent that they have keys. They wore the keys as necklaces in order to keep track of them. He unlocked the apartment door and walked in, closing and locking the door, stopping momentarily to observe the apartment. He didn't bother with the television in the living room given that there was nothing to watch. He decided instead that he would go to his room and spend however many hours he had alone in there.

He only had the diapers and nothing else. Being that he was finally alone, he decided he might as well try to relax and forget about Salty's troubles at school, knowing that he would be all right from now on with the teachers watching out for him. For the time being, however, he was only concerned with relaxing, if only for a couple of hours. Lying down on his bed, he ripped open, smiling widely as the diapers fell on top of him, their softness caressing his face, leaving him to sigh in content as he buried his face in them and took a whiff. Oh, how he loved the smell of a fresh, clean diaper! He sighed once again and went about diapering himself, though truthfully he would have liked it had someone else been doing it for him. He put on a few diapers, the thickness making him happy. As far as he was concerned, the thicker the diaper, the better. Not only was wearing more than one diaper extremely comfortable, but it helped prevent leakage. He'd found this out when he'd gotten fed up with having to wash the sheets every time the diaper leaked. Plus, the extra padding felt really good against his rump, a feeling that he loved so much.

Sighing in content, patting his thick, padded butt, he put one hand behind his head while beginning to suck on his thumb, a smile coming over his face. He rolled over onto his side, his diapers rustling along with him. His smile grew bigger, if possible. He _adored_ the sound of his diapers rustling as he moved. He finally decided to go ahead and try crawling on his hands and knees for a change. Getting out of bed, he began crawling around the room, the thickness of his diapers rubbing between his legs. Meanwhile, their rustling as he moved filled his ears. He sat down on his padded rear and began sucking his thumb once again, feeling perfectly content.

During this activity, he began to imagine himself living with another family, a _loving_ family that would come to his aid if he should need anything. He pictured them being right outside the bedroom door. Mother was busily cooking dinner while father was watching television or reading the newspaper, sipping his coffee. Either one of them would walk in the nursery whenever he cried, pick him up and cradle him in their arms, rocking him back and forth while their sweet talk calmed him down. Then, they would walk him down the hall and hand him over to the other parent while they fixed his bottle or got him something to eat. Otherwise they would play with him or change his diaper while he happily sucked his thumb.

When he opened his eyes, he found that he was once again alone, his fantasies diminished. Sighing once again, he noticed that he was low on diapers. He shrugged his shoulders, figuring that he might as well go ahead and get some right now since he had a little bit of time on his hands. Standing up, he waddled to the apartment door. With him wearing so many diapers at once, it was pretty obvious that he was diapered, due to the very thick bulge at his front and back. He decided to go ahead and take a couple of them off to make the fact that he was diapered less noticeable and then went out the apartment door, grabbing some money off the kitchen table on his way out.

As he was getting his diapers, he wondered over to the pacifier and baby bottles section of the store. He couldn't help himself. He just had to have one of each! He first made sure that he had enough money before choosing what bottle and pacifier he wanted.

Back at home, he quickly found that lying in bed with a diaper on and with the pacifier in his mouth was extremely relaxing. It helped him get away from the stresses of life and helped him forget about the hell he went through both at home and at school, the hell his father and the staff and the bullies at school put him through on a daily basis. During these times he would drift off to his imaginary world, to his imaginary loving family, where he would role play as their baby and be at peace, but only for a little while.

However, the beatings from Tony were getting severe. Humphrey, having finally reached his breaking point, decided to make a nightstick in wood shop class and the next time Tony dared to rear back his hand to hit him, he would pull it out and hit Tony first. He wanted Tony to feel the pain and the fear of being hit again that Tony inflicted upon him. The man deserved it, after all. Once he had the nightstick done, he stowed it away in his backpack and took it home with him. Besides, the school surely wouldn't allow him to keep at school for fear that he would use as a weapon. He had no intention of doing so. He was happy while at North Park High School, where he was treated like a normal person for once and not someone who was retarded.

That was just what Humphrey did during Tony's next attack. As Tony approached him, Humphrey raised the nightstick towards Tony's face.

Tony blinked at this, then stared down at Humphrey. "You going to hit me?"

Humphrey said nothing in response.

Tony smiled. "Well, come on, do it, big man! Let's see if you've got a pair and can actually hit your old man!"

Humphrey reared back the nightstick over his head, his grip on the side handle tightening.

"Come on," Tony bellowed. "Hit me, you goddamn pussy!"

Humphrey shook his head. No, he wasn't that type of person. Realizing this and realizing that Tony would just turn the whole thing against him anyway.

Tony nodded. "Yeah, that's what I thought," he muttered. He snatched nightstick out of Humphrey's hand and retreated to his bedroom.

"What on Earth were you thinking, Humphrey?" Salty inquired.

Humphrey glared at him. "Shut up, Salty! I was thinking of teaching that motherfucker a lesson for once in his life!"

"Humphrey," Garth scolded hotly, shocked.

"Humph!" Humphrey turned his head and spit on the floor before walking forward to his bedroom, stopping momentarily at Tony's bedroom, having overheard Tony talking to someone.

"Yes, officer, he hit me with a nightstick," Tony said. There was a pause "I don't know where he got one, officer. He must have made it at school or something. Regardless, I want you to come and get him right away. He's a real problem child, officer. I can't control him. Maybe some time in jail would do him some good. What do you think?" There was another pause. "Thank you, officer."

Humphrey shook his head and retreated to his bedroom to wait to be arrested for supposedly assaulting his father. He should have known better. He should have known that Tony would turn the incident against him, regardless of whether he actually hit him or not. He sighed and lied down on his bed, raising his head up as Garth and Salty walked in.

Garth sighed as he stared down at his brother, arms folded. "You'll go to jail, you know, for even thinking about hitting Tony." He smirked. "Serves you right, you asshole. How dare you even think of doing such a thing to your own father?"

Humphrey sat up and glared at his younger brother. "Oh, please. You can't tell me you wouldn't have done the same. It's called self-defense, Garth."

"No, it's called being a dumb ass, Humphrey," Garth retorted, his fists shaking. "You should know better than any three of us that he would have used that nightstick against you."

Humphrey slid out of bed and stood up, having to stand up on his toes in order to make sure that they were eye level. "Fuck you, Garth." He purposely bumped shoulders with his younger brother as he walked off, stopping halfway down the hallway when he heard the doorbell ring. _Wow, that was fast!_

Tony stepped out of his bedroom and walked towards the apartment door to let in the policemen. After an exchange of greetings, Tony once again explained the situation to them and pointed at Humphrey, requesting that they arrest him.

The policemen approached Humphrey, causing him to take a couple of steps back. Neither one of them seemed ready to arrest him just yet, at least not until they had his side of the story. One of them pointed to the sofa bed and Humphrey nodded, sitting down while they stood in front of him.

While Humphrey was busy explaining the situation to the policemen, Garth was busy trying to talk Tony out of pressing charges against Humphrey.

"Please, don't do this," Garth pleaded. "He's only twelve."

"That motherfucker needs to learn not to defy me," Tony snapped. "How dare he even _think_ of threatening me?" He kicked over at the dresser.

Garth nodded in agreement. "Yes, he was being an idiot, but that doesn't mean he has to go to jail for being a dumb ass."

Tony shook his head. "No. It'll do him some good, teach him to know his place. I hope he gets raped while he's in there. That will teach him not to cross me."

Garth cringed visibly at this statement, but nonetheless tried to talk Tony out of doing anything irrational. "If you send him to jail, you'll only end up looking like the bad guy. He'll turn it around to make it look like you hit him and he was defending himself. I'm telling you, arresting him will only bring trouble on yourself."

Tony tapped his chin in thought. "Maybe you're right."

"Of course I'm right. I'm always right."

Tony snorted. "You're smart, but you're not as smart as me."

"Maybe so."

"We should go ahead and get out there before your idiot brother causes any more trouble."

"Good idea."

Walking in the living room, Humphrey was still talking to the policemen.

"Are you going to press charges?" one of them asked Humphrey.

Humphrey shook his head. "No."

The policeman raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"My mistake," Tony said. "Besides, I and my son can talk it out."

"So you do not wish for your son to be arrested?"

"No."

"Very well. So, the situation is under control then?"

"It looks that way."

"Great. Then, we'll be on our way."

Unfortunately for Humphrey and his brothers, the beatings continued and nothing was done about them.

One issue that kept coming up while living with Tony was the issue of food. With him being so busy with work, Tony rarely had time to shop and being the oldest automatically meant that it was up to Humphrey to take care of this responsibility as well. However, whenever he would go to Tony and ask for money so he could go grocery shopping, Tony would burst out in anger, yelling, "What, do you think I'm made of money?!" He would usually throw down a twenty dollar bill. To Humphrey, this was interesting. He found many creative ways to feed four people on only twenty dollars. Sadly, he and his brothers, when Tony wasn't around, ended up eating a good quantity of shoestring fries since the store down the street had them on sale where Humphrey could get three bags for only a buck. True, it wasn't exactly healthy, but at the very least it kept them full until their next meal.

One afternoon after another meal of shoestring fries, Humphrey, Garth, and Salty decided to go outside and ride their bikes around the apartment complex. They met a couple of other bikers who were jumping off a ramp set up against a trash can and doing various tricks. The bikers dared each of them to try to do a couple of tricks off the ramp. While Garth and Salty declined, Humphrey accepted the challenge, unable to resist. Of course being the more cautious one, Garth attempted to talk Humphrey out of it, but his words fell on deaf ears as Humphrey biked away from him.

He biked at least twenty feet away from the ramp. When he was ready, he began pedaling as fast as he could, drawing closer and closer to the ramp with the faster he went. He inhaled sharply, preparing himself to take off from the ramp, getting a good amount of height in the air, enabling him to perform a couple of tricks before landing. However, that never happened.

Humphrey wasn't entirely sure how it happened, but he suddenly found himself being flung forward over the handlebars of his bike and landing hard on his feet, becoming a crumbled mess on the pavement of the parking lot. Before he could even register what had happened, he blacked out. The last thing he saw was Garth and Salty hovering over him, worried glances on their faces, while the laughter and taunting of the bikers filled his ears until he could hear nothing but silence, his world full of nothing but blackness.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

What was funny about the whole bicycle accident was that the pain was so minimal that Humphrey barely felt anything. He merely thought he had sprained his ankle. When he tried to stand up and take as step, the bones in his ankles rubbed together. This he felt and he immediately sat back down. Now he was convinced that something was wrong.

"Do you Wolfs need any help?"

Humphrey, Garth, and Salty all three turned to see that a female had stopped and was now staring at the three of them, mostly at Humphrey.

"I think there might be something wrong with my foot," Humphrey told her.

The female nodded and took out her phone, dialing 911, just to be sure that everything was all right with him. The ambulance arrived on the scene fairly shortly and hoisted Humphrey into the back once they'd put him on a stretcher. Before leaving, Humphrey instructed Garth to call Tony and let him know what was going on. His younger brother gave him a nod, telling him that he would.

The call that Garth made to Tony was, Humphrey felt, quite strange, to say the least. Garth, for whatever reason, told Tony that Humphrey had been hit by a car and had been picked up by an ambulance. He went on to say that he thought that the ambulance was merely going to take Humphrey home and he couldn't understand why Humphrey wasn't home yet.

Meanwhile at the hospital, Humphrey was taken into surgery once it was discovered that his ankle was broken. He was put to sleep and they went to work on his ankle. They put three screws on the inside of his foot and a plate with ten screws on the outside of his foot. Several hours after the surgery was declared a success, he woke up.

Throughout the next two days in which he was at the hospital, he was not given any pain medication.

"Don't give him any pain medication," Tony told them. "I don't want him getting addicted to the stuff."

The nurse nodded her head. "Yes, sir."

Tony gave her a nod of gratitude and walked out of the hospital entrance.

"So, what's the story?" Garth asked as Tony walked past them.

"Humphrey isn't to be put on any pain medication," Tony told him simply.

"What?!"

"I don't want him getting addicted to it."

"Oh, is that so?" Without warning, Garth charged into the hospital, marching up to the front desk and slamming his fist down. "You listen to me! You put my brother on pain medication right now or I will have you reported to the police for improper care of one of your patients. I'll see to it that you're fired, damn you!"

"Okay, okay, calm down, kid," the nurse said. "Your father told us–"

"To hell with what my father told you! I'm telling you that you'd better put my brother on pain medication now or I'll see to it that you never work in this hospital ever again! You hear me?!"

The nurse sighed and turned to a doctor a couple of feet away from her. "Dr. Rosenthal?" As she said this, the man looked up from his clipboard. "Please see to it that Humphrey is put on pain medication from on out until his release."

The doctor nodded and walked off, clipboard tucked under his arm.

The nurse turned back to Garth. "Satisfied?"

Garth nodded and approval and walked back out to his father and brother.

"If he gets addicted to that stuff, I'm going to kick your ass," Tony hissed in Garth's ear.

Garth ignored him as he approached the family car and got in the passenger seat.

Naturally while at the hospital, Humphrey managed to have a few accidents. These were glossed over by the faculty and staff of the hospital, suspecting that it was merely due to the pain medication that he was having wetting accidents. What made this worse was the fact that he didn't have any of his diapers with him, so there was no way for him to prevent the sheets from getting wet and having one of the nurses wash them for him. It was really quite embarrassing for him and he couldn't stop from apologizing for making them wash his sheets so many times. They reassured him that it was nothing that they were used to it. He still couldn't help but feel bad, though. If he could, he would have told them that it was due to him being nocturnally incontinent, about how the root cause of the problem was not from the pain medication, but from his bed wetting issues. He was afraid, however, that he if he told them they would end up telling his father and that was the last thing he wanted as of right now.

Soon thereafter, Humphrey was taught how to use crutches. It wasn't too bad. He found that he could easily walk on just one leg, hiking the other up to prevent any further damage to either the bone or the tissue or what have you. He imagined that he must have looked quite silly due to the fact that he was walking around with one leg hiked up in the leg, looking like a dog that was about to take a piss on the nearest fire hydrant. Of course his walking suffered quite a bit, no matter how easy walking with the crutches was. He wobbled from side to side whenever he walked. This faded away as he became more used to using the crutches and using them became like second nature to him.

While at home, Garth and Salty did their best to do whatever they could to make Humphrey more comfortable, so that he wouldn't have to walk as much. They got him stuff whenever he requested it. He merely didn't sit on his rump all day and take Garth and Salty's service for granted. He did get up and walk about every now and then. He still had to go to school, of course. The only one who wasn't helping him at all was Tony. Whenever he would ask for Tony to get him something, Tony would flat-out refuse, suggesting instead that Humphrey get up off his ass and get it himself, stating that walking on his foot would help it heal better. It seemed that Humphrey wasn't the only peeved by Tony's refusal to help him. It seemed both Garth and Salty were quite pissed at how stubborn Tony was being. Whenever Tony would refuse to help him in any way, Garth or Salty would do what it was Humphrey wanted for him.

School was another issue for Humphrey. Oftentimes when walking down the halls, various people would trip him, causing his crutches to fly out of his hands and causing severe pain to shoot through his injured foot. Garth and Salty would help him up and support him while they went and got his crutches. He was just thankful that it was almost summer and he wouldn't have to get up and go anywhere.

At home, Humphrey began using a rolling chair as a wheelchair. This made getting around a lot easier and he could stand on his good leg to get things. While getting a can of soda from the fridge one morning, he noticed the calendar on the side and noticed that tomorrow was the day he was supposed to go in and get his ankle and cast checked. It'd been over four weeks since he'd had the blasted cast put on. Tony was supposed to take him. He hoped Tony wouldn't forget.

The next morning, Humphrey didn't wake up until ten thirty in the morning. By this time Tony had already gone to work. Garth and Salty were in the living room watching cartoons while eating bowls of cereal. He walked in the kitchen and grabbed a couple of honey buns from the cabinet and joined them. While unwrapping one of them, he asked Garth, "Do you when Tony will be back?"

Garth shook his head as he ate a spoonful of cereal. "Sorry, Humphrey."

Humphrey grumbled in anger. He was supposed to take me to the doctor today!"

"What time?" Garth wiped his mouth on his sleeve, clearing his throat afterward before eating another spoonful of cereal.

Humphrey shook his head. "No, don't worry about it. You don't have to take me."

"I'm not asking."

Humphrey sighed. "I have to be there around one thirty."

"Okay. So after lunch, we'll go there."

"It'd probably be better if we just grab a bite to eat on the way there, Garth. You know how slow you and I eat compared to Salty." He chuckled and ruffled the fur on his little brother's head.

Garth nodded. "True."

The three Wolfs arrived at the hospital a little after one, all three deciding that it was best to arrive early rather than late. Humphrey told the receptionist that he had an appointment with Dr. Duvall and waited along with his brothers in the waiting room to be called down to the doctor's office. While Salty looked through the books and Garth flipped through a magazine, Humphrey was too busy looking around the room. He found a television in one corner of the room and began watching.

"In recent news," the anchorfemale stated, "Pam Smith and Sandra Carter were tried and charged today with pedophilia. Police found on their computer a website dedicated to babies, as well as several pictures showing various babies. During the warrant search of their home, police found a room decorated to look like a nursery. . . ."

Humphrey let out a sigh. Nothing but the news was on. Boor-ring! He went back to looking around the room, only for his head to turn swiftly to the right upon hearing his name called. He tapped Garth's knee and motioned that it was time for them to get up and report to Dr. Duvall's room. The three of them followed a nurse to the room and were told that the doctor would be in the room shortly. The three merely stood in silence while they waited for the doctor to walk in. Only after a couple of minutes, Humphrey was having his ankle examined.

"You should have had this cast taken off two months ago," Dr. Duvall stated. He gently moved Humphrey's foot to the left, noticing quickly that Humphrey winced in pain, even due to the slightest movement. "Have you been walking on it?"

"My father suggested it," Humphrey groaned.

Dr. Duvall sighed and shook his head. "You shouldn't have been walking on it at all. Because you've been walking on it, your foot has healed incorrectly. Look," he pointed to Humphrey's foot, "it's pointing two inches to the left." He stood up and sighed, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his white coat. "You said you've been suffering from back pain. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

"There's why. Your damaged foot is throwing out your body alignment." He knelt down yet again and gently grasped the foot. "Let's see if I can't get it realigned properly."

"No! I don't want to be in a cast for any longer than I have to be. Besides, I can't deal with the pain any longer. And look at this." He grabbed his bloated belly and lifted it and let it go, the contents within it sloshing audibly as it bounced a couple of times before settling. "I've gone from 190 pounds to 240 in only two months from not being able to ride my bike."

"Yes, I noticed the rapid weight gain when I weighed you." He nodded his head. "Very well. Would you care to try surgery? Just like last time, you will be sedated and you'll sleep through the whole procedure."

Humphrey nodded. "That will work."

Humphrey let out a tired yawn as he walked in the living room. Garth and Salty were in the kitchen eating breakfast. He was sure that they could get themselves to school. After all, unlike him, Garth had a built-in GPS system in his brain, so there was a fat chance of them getting lost. Walking over to the couch, he noticed Tony sleeping, a bottle of Black Velvet in one hand and a can of Pepsi in the other. Resting on the coffee top was a glass with the two beverages mixed in it. He smiled, recalling the many times he and Garth would mix their drinks together (Mr. Fizz and orange soda) and drink the concoction. Clearly, Tony had been drinking–again–and there was no way he was well enough to drive. While he didn't love his father, he still didn't want Tony to get hurt. But why did he feel the need to protect Tony from hurting himself if he didn't care for the man? Humphrey didn't understand it, but decided not question it for the time being. Instead, he decided that the only way to keep Tony from driving while drunk was to take his car keys. At the time, Humphrey had possession of a box that he kept locked. He found Tony's car keys on the coffee table and locked them in the box he kept stashed in his closet before heading off to school.

Humphrey's day at school started out well enough. It wasn't until ten thirty that he was called down to the office. He was surprised to see Tony standing there when he arrived. Without warning, Tony grabbed him and dragged him outside to the school entrance. Slamming Humphrey against the wall, he held out his hand and said, "Give them to me."

Humphrey struggled against the tight grasp that Tony had on his throat. "What?"

"My car keys. Give me my fucking car keys."

"I don't have them."

"Bullshit! Garth and Salty wouldn't dare touch them. You're the only asshole that would! Now, give them to me, now!"

"I told you I don't have them."

"You're lying!"

"They're in the box on the shelf of my closet. Here–here's the key." He feebly reached into his pocket and dropped the key into Tony's hand. He hoped that Tony would just leave it at that, but instead he was slapped in the cheek.

"Why the fuck did you do that, you stupid ass! I need to get to work! What the hell's the matter with you!" He finally let go of Humphrey and allowed him to go back to class.

In his mind, however, Humphrey knew he'd done the right. Though, he hadn't done it out of concern for Tony's safety; he'd done it out of concern for the person he was more likely to hit while driving drunk. He never should have given Tony the key to his box, but he knew that if he didn't, he would just continue to be throttled by Tony, who wouldn't leave him alone until he handed over his car keys.

The rest of the day went by without incident. Humphrey was left to himself when he got home. Garth was off at an extra-curricular activity and Salty was over at the Millers helping Eleanor with a recipe. He had the afternoon to himself, so he decided that he would go ahead and have some fun for the time being. As far as he was concerned, his brothers and Tony wouldn't be home for a good long while, at least not until later on that evening.

Going into the kitchen, he noticed that the trash can was quite full. Tying up the bag once he'd removed it, he took it out to the dumpster. He stopped when he reached the dumpster and noticed that there was a car seat next to it. After he'd gotten rid of the trash, he grabbed the car seat and took it in the apartment. He managed to get it clean well enough to where it wouldn't give off any foul odor and to where he could play with it without any fear of getting dirty from his pretend play while in it. Once he had the car seat cleaned off, he put on a diaper and strapped himself in. Closing his eyes, he began to imagine himself in the back seat of the car that his imaginary family drove. They were on a trip, a fun trip at that.

Eventually, he climbed out of the car seat and began crawling around the room, his diaper rustling as he moved his legs, enjoying the thickness between his legs, his thighs rubbing against his diaper. He found one of Salty's teddy bears lying on his bed and began cuddling with it, stroking his diaper with his heels, enjoying the soft touch. He buried his face in its warm, fuzzy fur and hugged it tightly. He tugged at the bow tied around the bear's neck until it came loose and fell to the side. He put an arm around the bear's neck, sighing happily as he continued to cuddle with the stuffed bear, allowing his head to fall onto his pillow. He chuckled to himself, enjoying how soft Salty's pillow was. He figured that he should sleep in Salty's bed more often. It was certainly more comfortable than his, for whatever reason that may be. It didn't matter at the moment. The only thing that mattered was the fact that he was safe and happy, for the time being. When his brothers and Tony got home, his happy mood would be swayed to that of depression. He figured that it was best to absorb his happiness, take in the moment and relish it for as long as he could. After all, his brothers and Tony would be home in only a few hours. Why not enjoy his few hours of bliss while he could?

He opened his eyes a while later to see that the light was turned on. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. Apparently, he had fallen asleep while cuddling with Salty's stuffed bear. Looking out the window, he noticed that it was nighttime; hence, why the bedroom light was on. He watched as Garth approached his bed and reached underneath it. He sprang off Salty's and marched over to Garth. "What are you doing?"

Garth simply ignored him and pulled out the package of diapers underneath Humphrey's bed before leaving the room, heading down the hallway towards the living room. He heard footsteps behind him and knew that Humphrey was following him. Humphrey seemed to be following him a little too quickly because the next thing Garth knew, he was falling to the floor and the package of diapers flew out of his hands. Raising his hands, he watched as a collection of diapers fell out of the package and onto the floor. He glanced over his shoulder at Humphrey, who merely glared at him.

"What's this?"

Both of them looked up to see Tony inspecting the items on the floor and looking at the both of them for an explanation.

"They're, uh . . . well, they're mine," Humphrey stated nervously, getting to his feet.

"What, do you have a diaper fetish or something?" Tony asked.

Humphrey nodded. 'Yeah, that's it."

Tony cocked an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Y–Yeah."

Tony shrugged. "Okay."

Humphrey blinked and cocked his head to the side, giving his father a befuddled look. "Wait. You're perfectly fine with this?"

"As long as you're not hurting anyone or anything, it's fine with me."

"Wait. What?" Garth asked, getting to his feet as well as he dusted himself off and adjusted his glasses.

"You heard me," Tony replied.

Humphrey shrugged, collected the diapers, and returned them to his room. He wasn't exactly sure why Garth had wanted to expose his love for diapers to Tony. Maybe Garth had done it in the hopes that he would be punished for his bed wetting like Salty was. He remembered that summer of 1990, during which Salty was threatened to be diapered, forced to sleep in a tub, threatened to wear plastic pants.

Still, the whole thing was funny to Humphrey. Tony had no problem with him having a diaper fetish, but yet his grandparents gave Salty hell for his bed wetting issue. It just didn't make any sense to Humphrey. At this point he didn't care. He was just glad that he wasn't getting beaten for his fetish, like Garth had apparently hoped for. He turned as he heard footsteps coming down the hall and watched as Garth turned towards the closet. "What are you doing now?"

"I'm getting ready for bed," Garth replied irritably, removing his pajama shirt from its hanger. "What's it look like? Wait a minute. What the . . ." He bent down and picked something up, turning to face Humphrey so that his older brother could see what it was. It was the car seat that Humphrey had found earlier that day. "Humphrey, what is this?"

"It's a car seat. What's it look like?"

"Where did you find it?"

"The trash."

"Ugh!" The bespectacled Wolfinstantly dropped the object and began wiping his hand on his clothes. "Take it back! You have no business having it!"

"But, Garth–"

"Now, Humphrey! Go!"

Humphrey sighed and picked up the car seat. Raising up the blinds and opening the window, he tossed it outside before heading to the apartment door. He made sure that Tony was distracted (he was busy watching television) before heading out to the apartment parking lot. He found the car seat lying lopsided on the sidewalk. Picking it up yet again, he carried it back to the dumpster and threw it in, finally turning to go back in the apartment. He supposed that his adventures with his imaginary family were now over and done with.

"Did you see this morning's paper?" Garth asked Humphrey. He set the newspaper on the table next to Humphrey's bowl of cereal. "Our idiot father made the news."

"What?" Humphrey set aside his bowl of cereal and glanced down at the newspaper article that had Tony's picture on it. Squinting due to the tiny print, he began reading the article that detailed how Tony had had a seizure while driving an El Monte city bus and had nearly crashed into a McDonald's. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the impact this incident had had on Tony's work had been great. Humphrey now realized why Tony had been fired yesterday. He'd made the announcement when he got home far earlier than usual. Humphrey just hoped that this wouldn't impact his life at school (or Garth or Salty's, for that matter) in any way, shape, or form.

Humphrey's hopes were quickly dashed as he and his brothers arrived at school the following Monday. The newspaper article regarding Tony was merely used against them as teasing, allowing those who had read it to pick on them. The news article was spread all over school and even the teachers had begun to question whether or not Humphrey and his brothers were safe while at home living with Tony. True, Humphrey wanted nothing more than to get as far away from Tony as possible, to hurry up with school and find his own place instead of having to live with the man he hated. Many people, not knowing about the seizure, simply assumed that Tony had been drinking while on the job, which wouldn't have surprised Humphrey , to be perfectly honest, and that he'd been driving under the influence, which had caused him to nearly drive through a McDonald's.

Due to Tony no longer working, the family was going through some financial crisis. It was getting harder and harder for Tony to make money and once again, Humphrey found himself having to take charge of things and take care of Garth and Salty. At the very most, he only had twenty dollars to live off for a week. He managed to come up with more creative means to do this than before, and thankfully the three of them didn't have to live off fries for as long as before due to Humphrey getting creative with the money Tony gave him on a weekly basis. Still, the financial crisis finally took its toll on the family when Tony came home from trying to find work and announced that the landlord was kicking them out of the apartment due to him not paying the rent on time. Because of this, he announced that they were going to live with their godfather Kenny until he could make enough money and find them a suitable place to live.

Due to the fact that Kenny was picking them up the following morning, they had to pack their stuff as soon as they could. They didn't pack much. They merely packed the bare essentials: clothes, school supplies, and, in Humphrey's case, diapers. Salty packed his stuffed bunny and his stuffed teddy bear, making Humphrey smile as he spotted the two stuffed animals nestled on top of Salty's clothes.

It was after breakfast that Kenny came and picked the Wolfs up. Garth and Salty said farewell to their father. As for Humphrey, he didn't as much as glance back at Tony as he walked out of the apartment and to Kenny's car. As far as he was concerned, he was grateful that he would be living with Kenny. He sat in the backseat beside Salty while Garth sat in the passenger seat.

North Hollywood, California was where Kenny lived. For whatever reason, Kenny had more than one bedroom in his house, so each of them got their own room, which was a nice change of pace in lieu of having to share one room all the time. It tended to get quite crowded when that happened.

Dub off Center was where Humphrey would be going. His brothers were going to a different school, being in the same grade. Therefore, they weren't ready for Dub off Center just yet. The abuse from the students and staff at the school resumed like in the previous schools that Humphrey had gone to. The school itself was mostly for kids with learning disabilities. Others had been sent there from having been expelled from their previous school due to crimes that ranged from fighting, stealing, and skipping class.

One of Humphrey's classes was spent on the computer. It was an English class, so naturally, they spent a good deal of the class period on the computer editing, revising, rewriting, and jotting down notes in notepads to improve their stories and nonfiction pieces, writing down any ideas that came to them. Being that there weren't enough computers, some students had to borrow laptops from the supply closet out in the hall. Due to the great number of students that were in the classroom, there weren't that many computers and laptops to give to every student, forcing some of them to bring their own laptops to school to work on their stories, which turned out to be just as well since many of them were more comfortable with saving their writings on their own computers instead of the school's. One Wolf who had forgotten his laptop at home approached Humphrey and requested that he be let on the computer.

"Hold on," Humphrey mumbled. "Wait your turn." He ignored the Wolf as he went back to working on his nonfiction piece, letting out a groan as he deleted various errors here and there. There were errors all over the place! The title of the piece should have been called "The Little Red Squiggly Line" because that's basically all he could see; nothing but little red squiggly lines underneath his misspelled words and errors in punctuation and grammar. He was never any good at writing.

He stopped suddenly when he felt something wet hit his neck. He slowly turned to see a string of saliva trailing from the Wolf's mouth and the Wolf smiling deviously at him. "Did you just spit on me?"

"So what if I did?" the Wolf asked. "What are you going to do about it, tubby?" He poked Humphrey in his bloated belly. "Are you going to fight me?"

That was a question that Humphrey got quite frequently at the school. For some odd reason, the students kept on requesting that he fight them. That wasn't Humphrey's style. He never fought unless for self-defense. He believed that the attitude of fighting someone just because he was pissed off was no way to live. He'd always lived under the rule, "Don't fight unless you have to."

Humphrey glared at the Wolf, but realized that the only way to make the Wolf leave him alone was to give the Wolf his wish. He could save the file as a draft in an email and then continue on with it at Kenny's house. The only rule that Kenny had about the computer was that they only use it for schoolwork and nothing else. Once he'd saved the file on an email, he slid the chair out from underneath the desk and allowed the Wolf on the computer while he continued the entry in his notebook from where he'd left off in the document. This way he wouldn't have to go through the anguish of trying to remember what it was he'd wanted to write down before the Wolf had interrupted him.

The bell rang and Humphrey grabbed his things to head to his next class. As he was scooping up his textbooks, the same Wolf who had bothered him about the computer swiped them and a chase ensued. It ended with Humphrey's books being tossed in the trash and Humphrey cursing under his breath as he dug them out.

Humphrey was also suffering from problems with his math teacher, Ms. Mach. Math was never one of his best subjects, so he would often rely on Garth to help him understand the material. When Garth wasn't around to help him, however, he would rely on the math teacher to help him. Whenever he asked her to help him, she would instead reply, "Shut up and just do your work." Because she wouldn't teach him the material, he relied on himself to understand the material when Garth wasn't there. Instead of eating, he would spend his lunch period reading and doing the exercise problems at the end of each section of a chapter and go back and reread entire pages until he understood the material. The only downside to this was that he received a "F" in the class due to his teacher refusing to take his completed work, believing him to have cheated and bribed someone else to do it for him, given that his work was correct and previously, all of his work had been done wrong. He didn't care. All that mattered to him was that he understood the material and that he'd done a good job of interpreting and teaching himself the lessons that were made so unbearably difficult by his math teacher.

Near the end of the school year, a whaling trip was held. Not long after arriving at school, Humphrey and his classmates boarded a bus and were taken to the beach. Following their teachers, they boarded a ship and went out. There was a fair breeze blowing that picked up speed as the boat went sailing out towards the deep ends of the ocean. After going a good long ways, a collection of whales began appearing. Holding onto the railing, Humphrey began to gaze out at the beautiful, glistening sea, the sunlight reflecting off its surface, creating a stunningly beautiful picture that he could easily find on a card. There were several whales, but none of them dared to get close to the ship. He counted at least ten whales. There have been even more than not.

He was suddenly picked up of the ground and held over the railing. He looked on both sides of him to see two Wolfs holding onto his legs.

"Ready for a swim?" one of the Wolfs asked.

There was no way for him to kick. His best bet was to use his fists for nothing more than self-defense. He wished he'd started kicking as soon as he'd felt a touch on his legs. Clearly, they were trying to throw him overboard. He knew that if he were to go overboard he would be crushed by the whales that weighed more than twenty tons. He punched both Wolfs in the gonads. They instantly dropped him. He nearly went overboard. He grabbed onto the railing and pulled himself up, hopping over onto the other side. He walked away from them, leaving them writhing on the floor of the ship, grabbing at their private parts.

He managed to find a staff member and told them about the incident. The only response he got was, "If I didn't see it, it didn't happen. There's nothing I can do." He stormed off in a huff to another part of the ship that was, thankfully, away from the two Wolfs who had attempted to throw him overboard. Sadly, he wasn't far away enough for them not to find him. Once they'd found him, they attempted to throw him overboard once more and he repeated the procedure of fighting them off, reporting the issue to a staff member, then walking off angrily to another part of the ship. This process was repeated yet again before he finally went inside the ship for the remainder of the ship. At the very least he got to see a few whales. That was at least one good thing about the trip.

After summer, Humphrey was put in a classroom due to his issues in his math class last year. He had no particular problems regarding schoolwork when it came to this room. The only problem he had in this classroom was that one of his classmates was constantly making sexual comments towards him. One of the things that the kid asked Humphrey to do was suck his cock, among other things. This got to the point where Humphrey dreaded going to the class, knowing that he would have to put up with the kid's sexual comments. He had tried moving seats, but the kid was quite persistent; Humphrey had to give him that. What he couldn't do through verbal means, he did through writing. Oftentimes a student would pass Humphrey a note. After unfolding it, he would read a sexual comment that the kid had written to him. He would quickly crumble it up and throw it in the trash before the teacher found it. The last thing he wanted was the teacher reading out

Humphrey was grateful when the bell finally rang. Unfortunately for him, he had math as his last class of the day. When he walked out to the hall, the kid socked him in the stomach and ran off. He cursed under his breath and gave chase. He knew by now that to report the incident to the staff would only end with him storming off in anger. Their chase eventually led them to the gym.

The two faced each other, hands balled into fists, glowering at the other. He picked up a small metal bench just as the kid was doing so. He had the intention of throwing his bench just as the kid threw his to cancel it out so that he wouldn't get hurt. He had no intention of actually hurting the kid. He was startled when the kid suddenly flung his bench at him. Luckily, the kid missed. Realizing that his purpose for picking up the bench in the first place had been thwarted, he put his bench down.

"What are you doing in here throwing benches?!"

Humphrey looked up to see a staff member approaching him, glaring. "I'm sorry?"

"You were planning on throwing that one too, weren't you?" the staff member said.

Humphrey blinked. "What?"

"Let's go, kid. You're in big trouble now."

"What?" He turned his head to see the kid he'd been fighting against being dragged out of the room.

"Stay here. I'll be back."

Humphrey, oddly enough, stayed exactly where he was and waited. A few minutes later, his bus driver, Bobby, and Marshall, a part-time staff member that worked on the time-out team, walked in the room. In Marshall's hands was a straightSaltyet. Seeing this, Humphrey ran away from them. As he ran down a hall, he learned that the kid he'd been fighting with had been transported home. He sat down at one of the lunch tables to calm down. There was no way he was going to sit in a smelly room for hours on end.

He shook his head at the incident that had occurred between him and the kid. This wasn't the first time that the two of them had gotten into it. There had been several instances where the two of them had gotten into fistfights. However, the staff continued to use the policy of, "If I didn't see it, it didn't happen." They weren't looking out for his safety. His safety was only ensured if the staff members were actively watching him, and that was a rarity in schools like this.

Having calmed down somewhat, he didn't run away when he spotted a staff member approaching him. The staff member sat down across from him, folding his hands and calmly staring at him. "Your father is on the phone. She wants to talk to you."

"Well," Humphrey replied, "you can go ahead and hang up the phone, because I have nothing to say to him."

The staff member nodded and continued. "Would you like to talk about what happened between you and that kid? You should have walked away, you know."

"I should have."

For a while the two of them talked about the incident, but not exactly what happened. Actually, the staff member belittled Humphrey for losing his temper and attempting to hurt the kid in the first place. The conversation was concluded with the staff member telling him that the psych ward team was on their way. He took Humphrey by the hand and led him to a classroom where there was an aid waiting for him.

Humphrey and the aid spent three hours talking, actually talking about the incident and what really occurred. After three hours of talking, there was a knock at the classroom door and the psych ward team walked in. Instantly, he began panicking. He knew that the school had already informed them on their side of the story, about what they only thought what happened. He was grateful that they'd at least taken the time to ask his side of the account of what happened, although deep down he knew it wouldn't change a thing. He would still be taken away, regardless of what he said. Nonetheless, he calmly explained to the psych ward what had happened. They wrote everything he said down in their notepads before stepping out of the room. Humphrey sat nervously and awaited his fate to be announced.

After only ten minutes of waiting, a team from the American Medical Response arrived with a bed with five restrains (two for the ankles, two for the wrists, and one for the waist). Along with the American Medical Response team, the psych team walked in, along with the therapist of the kid who had attacked Humphrey.

"Listen very carefully," one of the psych team members, a female, stated. "If you refuse to cooperate and do as we say, we will call the police. You will be arrested and taken to Van Nuys Psychiatric Hospital by the police. Do you understand?"

Humphrey nodded his head. Given those choices, he realized he had no choice. He would have to allow them to put him in the restraints or otherwise be treated like an everyday criminal by the police. He lied down on the bed and allowed to be put into restraints. During this time, he learned from the kid's therapist that the kid's name was Sean. She was standing next to him while he was being put in restraints. She leaned down to his level and said, "You're being such a good Wolf for letting them put the restraints on you." He gave her a death glare. How dare she act like she was praising some small child for following directions from Mommy! He just wanted her to shut up! She wasn't helping the situation; if anything, she was only making it worse, thereby making him more upset about the whole ordeal in the process.

It was seven thirty by the time they arrived at the hospital. By this time it was dark. Once he was wheeled inside, the restraints on his wrists were taken off, yet the restrains on his ankles and waist were left on. He sat with his arms folded, waiting in the lobby to be checked in. During this time, a group of kids walked in the hospital from their short recess. As most of them passed by, they took the time to glance at Humphrey, checking out "the new kid," so to speak.

He thought that he would be grateful when he got checked in, but as soon as he was checked in, he was taken to the time-out room and a strip search was issued. Once a Polaroid photo of him had been taken, the staff at the hospital requested that he remove all of his clothes, including his boxers. Understandably, he was more than a little reluctant to go through with this. From his previous experiences at this hospital, he knew that if he didn't cooperate, he would be put in restraints and confined to the room. He was asked to raise his arms and spread his legs so that it could be determined if he was hiding anything under his arms or in between his legs. Nothing was found.

At long last, the strip search was over and done with and, after putting his clothes back on, he went to the nurse's station and told to sit in a chair across from the nurse. He was asked a series of questions. He didn't answer them. He was still pissed about what had happened at school. He began to explain himself yet again, telling her that he didn't need to be at the psych ward. He wasn't the one who had attacked Sean. It was the other way around. When he realized that she wasn't listening to him, merely filling out the paperwork instead, he stopped talking and signed in the places that she instructed him to. Once that was done with, she showed him to his room.

His room was the second door down from the dining room, across from the Wolfs' day room. It had three beds in it and a bathroom accessed by both rooms. However, he wasn't free to use it anytime he wanted. The bathroom was locked. He had to ask permission to use the bathroom. There was just a sink and a toilet. The lid was tied down so he couldn't open the tank, he assumed so he couldn't take the lid off and take anything out of the tank or try to drown himself in the tank or something. The room window looked out to the street. He could look out, but no one could look in. They had the window, but then they had an outer, much thicker, window pane on the outside that was tinted. He could see the bus stop from where he was and he spent much of the visitor's time by the window looking for someone in his family to step off the bus, but no one did.

Once he was familiar with his room, he was told that he had to report group therapy He was in no mood to go to therapy. He just wanted to be left alone. After all, he still had to process all that had happened over the past five hours. When the nurse came back in the room a few minutes later and told him that it was time to go to group therapy, he refused, telling her that he just wanted to be left alone. Two minutes later, two men walked in the room and grabbed him, dragging him to one of the solitary rooms. Shoving him in, they locked the door.

After forty-five minutes of being left in the solitary room, he was allowed to go back to his room. He hadn't been in his room for even ten minutes when the two men who had locked him in the solitary room came rushing in his room. He stood up on reflex. One of the men grabbed him, spun him around, and twisted his arm behind his back. He cried out in pain and attempted to kick the man who had him in an arm lock in the shin. The man seemed to have anticipated his attack because he cancelled out Humphrey's sweeping foot with his own, bringing Humphrey down onto the bed. The other staff member went about untying the shoelaces on Humphrey's shoes. Once they were done, he fell to the floor.

For the next two days, he couldn't move his arm due to the severe pain that was coursing through it. He was grateful that he was only held at the hospital for only a week before Dub off Center allowed him to go back. When he returned, he was told to not make up stories or lie to get other kids in trouble. Inwardly, he laughed about this. It seemed he was always the one who was lying or making up stories. To them, he never told the truth and was only looking to get other kids in trouble.

Sean wasn't punished for harassing Humphrey. Because of this, the Wolf wouldn't stop, even after having a meeting. They were told not to talk to each other and to stay as far away from each other as possible. This was all fine for Humphrey. After all, it was what he'd wanted to happen all along. Still, Sean persisted and continued to make sexual comments towards Humphrey, constantly asking the Wolfto lick his privates. This time, however, Humphrey handled the situation much more maturely. Instead of outright doing something that was more than likely to get him in trouble, thanks to the policy of "If I didn't see it, it didn't happen," he decided to go outside to cool down. He found himself doing this quite often, practically every day, due to the fact that Sean grated on his nerves so badly. Of course Sean was never punished for his harassment because the staff never heard the sexual comments he made towards Humphrey, so they believed that Humphrey was merely acting out. Whenever they would approach him to put him in the solitary room, he would run from them. Their excuse for wanting to put him in the solitary room was because they were fed up with him not staying in the classroom.

After two hours of chasing Humphrey around, instead of letting him cool off and go back to class like he naturally would have, they eventually sent him home. When he got home, he noticed that Tony, Garth, and Salty were in the family car. Tony motioned for him to get in and he did so without question. In the backseat he noticed that there was a bag with his clothes and other belongings in it. He had a feeling that he knew where they were going; he hoped that his instincts were wrong.

When they stopped for gas, Humphrey attempted to get out to get something to drink, but Tony told him and Garth and Salty to stay in the car. Once they had filled up on gas, they drove to Covina and soon arrived at Charter Oak Hospital.

"Go in and tell the nurse that you're suicidal," Tony told Humphrey.

Humphrey, on the other hand, wasn't about to make the same mistake twice. He remembered what had happened the last time he'd done that. Nonetheless, Tony led him into the hospital and he was called in by the nurse and he explained what was going on. He only told her that he was having some trouble with some bullies at school and that was it.

"Are you suicidal?" she asked him.

He answered, "No."

She nodded and called in Tony. "He says he's not suicidal."

"But he is," Tony insisted.

"He says he's not and if he's not, then we can't admit him."

"Then perhaps he should be put in a group home."

"Please sit out in the lobby while I make some calls."

Tony nodded and led Humphrey out to the lobby. "Don't worry," he coaxed. "You'll like being in a group home. It'll be good for you."

After a few minutes of waiting, the nurse came out and reported that Humphrey didn't meet the requirements to be put in a group home. In response to this, Tony began acting as if he was crying.

"If the situation is that bad," the nurse said, "maybe you should look into child services."

Tony nodded and thanked the nurse for her help before taking Humphrey back out to the family car and driving over a few cities until they arrived at the Department for Child and Family Services. Walking in with Humphrey, Tony sat down with a social worker and began explaining how Humphrey beat him and his other two sons that the three of them feared for their lives.

To Humphrey, the complete opposite was happening. He was the one who was getting beaten. He was the one who was afraid of his father. He was the one who feared for his life. He had never hit Tony, not once. Brothers being brothers, of course he and Garth got into fights. It was never anything serious; no broken bones or anything of that extreme. It was mostly just yelling at each other back and forth. When he tried to disprove Tony's accusations, telling the social worker that Tony was lying, she merely told him, "Just sit there and be quiet." It was quite clear that no matter what he said, the social worker wouldn't listen to him. He had no choice but to take the social worker's demand and obey it.

"Okay, we'll take him," the social worker stated. "Because he's a threat, we can't put him in a group home, but we can put him in a juvenile detention center. He'll be held there until he's twenty-one, at which time he'll be released. This will cost you six hundred dollars a month in child support in order for us to take care of him."

Tony shook his head. "I'm sorry. I don't have that much money. I wouldn't be able to provide enough money for you to take care of him."

"Then what do you suggest?"

"I guess I have no choice but to take him home with me."

"Well, okay. If you have any problems out of him, just give me a call." She turned to Humphrey. "If you do cause any problems, I will have the police go to your house, arrest you, and they will take you to the juvenile detention center. Do we have an understanding?"

Humphrey nodded. "Yes."

The social worker turned back to Tony. "Good! Well, it looks like your situation is taken care of. Let me give you my number." She grabbed a notepad and a pen and scribbled down her phone number before ripping off the sheet and handing it to Tony. "Remember, if there are any problems, just give me a call."

Tony nodded as he stood up, folding up the piece of paper and placing it in his pocket. "Thank you." He turned to Humphrey. "Let's go."

Humphrey spent much of his time from then on simply either sleeping or going to school. On other days he would grab his bike and ride up to Griffin Park and stay there, reporting back home five minutes before his bedtime. When he got home, he would shower and go to bed after eating whatever Garth had prepared for dinner.

At school, Humphrey was too fearful of what would happen if he reported the bullies to the principal. More than likely they would weasel their way out of the situation and he would then be arrested for being a problem child. He had no choice but to take the beatings that he received from the bullies on a daily basis.

He reported the abuse to Tony, who only accused him of lying so he wouldn't have to go to school. Humphrey went on to say that he was fed up with all the pain and hurt that he'd endured up until now and wanted it to stop. He felt like dying. When he told Tony this, his father looked him in the eyes and said, "The steak knives are in the kitchen. Go for it." Hurt and upset by such a comment, Humphrey ran outside, grabbed his bike, and took off until he arrived at the local Met link commuter train station.

He loved trains. He knew that a train could go up to a good sixty-five miles an hour and therefore, death would be instantaneous. Getting off his bike, he stepped onto the train tracks and crossed his arms, waiting patiently for the train to strike him. In the distance he could see a bright light that crept closer and closer to him. He supposed that the conductor could have seen him because he heard the blaring of the horn twice. He refused to move. He closed his eyes and prepared for the angel of death to take him away, away from all the pain and hurt that the world offered him. In just a few seconds he would be at a better place and time.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Two seconds before the train struck him, Humphrey stepped off the rail. He felt the rush of air as it barely missed striking him. He was sure he gave the poor conductor a heart attack, but at the time he was totally calm.

Truth is, though, he wasn't thinking about the conductor or how it would have made him feel if he had hit Humphrey. He was hurting not just from the abuse at Dub off Center, but Tony's comment at his pain as well. He wanted out. He didn't want to live through any more abuse. He was ready to leave.

But at the last second something made him move. He couldn't even explain what it was. Because at the time he was happy to end his life, but he guessed God must've been watching out for him and had something more planned for his life. He just got back on his bike, went home, and went to bed.

Metro link was always one of Humphrey's favorite trains to ride down in the LA area. He liked to watch trains and airplanes so living in North Hollywood, going to the Burbank airport/train station was his favorite spot because he would get to see both airplanes and trains.

Later on the comment about the knife came up in therapy at the next session and the therapist walked Humphrey out and chewed out Tony for his knife comment. Tony made a comment saying, "Just had to tell your therapist about that, didn't you?" Not that it did much good. Humphrey didn't mention the train, though. He wasn't looking for yet another stay in Van Nuys Psychiatric. Enough damage was done already.

Because of the rough home life in addition to the abuse at school, Humphrey often spent a lot of time away from home riding around on his bicycle. His thinking was if he wasn't home he couldn't do anything to get sent back to the hospital or anything else. He would go out on his bike as soon as he got home from school and wouldn't be back home until five minutes before the bedtime Tony had for him, which was nine pm.

Humphrey's bike was one of those ten speeds. He often felt at home at parks and in nature. There were many close to where he was living in Glendale, but his favorite place to go was Griffith Park. The park was huge. Some of the attractions there were a horse riding trail, observatory, zoo, and Travel Town (in which children rode on 1/7th scale trains) just to name a few.

One of Humphrey's favorite places to go in the park was Travel Town. The place had full scale train cars he could go inside of, a model railroad inside the building, and out back was a 1/7th scale ride on train that only cost fifty cents a ride, plus much, much more. He would go with five dollars and get hours of rides out of it.

He was one of very few sixteen year olds riding it, but he really didn't care what anyone thought. There, he could forget his life and just be like every other kid there, just having a good time.

There was the car accident while on the Dub off school bus. Bobby, who was Humphrey's bus driver while going to dub off and also one of the time out room staff, picked up the last kid that morning. The bus got to the corner of the street and after stopping at the stop sign proceeded to make his left turn.

That's when a car didn't stop and slammed into the left front side of the bus, causing the bus to tip onto the two right side tires as they drove along the car's bumper and then landed back on its wheels. The bus driver pulled over to the side of the street.

As expected, the kids were shaken up, and the Wolf they'd just picked up wanted to walk back to his house, but the driver didn't let any of the kids off the bus. Another bus was called and they were transferred to another bus and taken to school. They didn't even talk to Humphrey about it, nor did they contact Tony to tell him Humphrey had been involved in an accident. And because there was no call home, when Humphrey tried to tell Tony, he was told he was lying. Tony told him had he been in an accident, he would have been called.

Humphrey was being threatened of being sent back to the hospital by the time out room staff. He was in the classroom trying to do his math assignment. He was having some problems understanding the work and asked the teacher for some help. He was told to be quiet. He tried to ask for the help and was again told to be quiet and do his work. Without the help to understand the work he couldn't do it, so he quietly closed his math book and placed his head down on the table.

Because he wasn't doing his work, the teacher phoned the time out room staff to "come deal with Humphrey." The staff came in and one of them knelt down next to Humphrey's desk and told him, "You need to do your work." Humphrey tried to explain the situation, but he cut Humphrey off saying, "Do we need to call the people?"

Confused, Humphrey asked, "What are you talking about?"

He told Humphrey, "The psych ward people."

Humphrey's heart began to pound in his chest. He jumped from his seat in panic and ran out of the classroom door as fast as he could. He was terrified of being sent back there. They didn't find him for over three hours. A teacher found him hiding behind a big bush. He was crying and couldn't stop shaking. He was so terrified of going back to Van Nuys Psych and being injured again. They had to call Tony to come and get him because he couldn't calm down.

Two days later, Humphrey was back at school. The staff were told never to threaten him with the psych ward again and they didn't. Apparently, the psych ward punishment was reserved only for Tony's use.

A teacher asked Humphrey to grade some work assignments. The teacher set him up on a chair outside the gym/lunch area, right across from the school's solitary room. Another bully at the school came out of the gym. He used the bathroom and then came over and tried to talk to Humphrey, who ignored him. Humphrey didn't want any trouble. When Humphrey wouldn't talk to him, he became angry. He then turned around and went into the solitary room that was located next to the gym and closed the door.

The kid then began throwing himself against the walls while yelling, "Humphrey, let me out! Why did you lock me in here?!" Several times Humphrey told him to just open the door, that he wasn't holding it. Finally, Humphrey stopped talking to him and just ignored him and continued grading the papers for the teacher.

A staff that was above them on the staff break patio heard him yelling and came down. The staff member looked at Humphrey while he walked over to the time out room. Humphrey was ignoring the kid and grading the work. The staff member opened the door to the solitary room and the kid came out with a bloody nose. The staff asked him how it happened and the bully told him Humphrey hit him and locked him in the solitary room. The staff member looked at Humphrey and said, "You're in big trouble," and walked off to the nurse's office. Humphrey was driven home by Marshall, the vice principal. Marshall also was one of the other staff who worked as one of the time out room staff with Bobby. Marshall was a white male about in his late forties during this time.

Humphrey went into the house to make some lunch. He was home just long enough to make some mac and cheese and sit down to watch some music videos when he saw the American Medical Response ambulance pull into the driveway. Because the ambulance use to take him to the psych ward during his childhood, he suffered from flashbacks and panic attacks whenever he saw them. Living in California, American Medical Response was a common ambulance company, so they weren't exactly avoidable.

Tony walked out to the ambulance and pointed to the alley. He had the ambulance leave and park in the alley until the mobile psych team arrived, as if Humphrey wouldn't see them there. There was almost two feet of the top of the ambulance, including the light bar sticking up on the other side of the brick wall. _Yeah, totally out of sight, Tony,_ Humphrey thought, rolling his eyes. Before he had even gotten home, Tony had called the psych ward and told them Humphrey was suicidal again, on top of other false things.

Humphrey went into a panic attack seeing the ambulance. He quickly put on his shoes and went into the bathroom and tried to go out the window, but there were too many nails in the window sill from past guests using the room. He couldn't make it out without getting his clothes repeatedly caught on the nails, so he walked out the front door and began walking to the back of the building, saying, "I have to get something from the back."

Tony sent one of the guys he knew from next door to see what Humphrey was doing. The second Humphrey turned the corner, he began to run as fast as he could down the back side of the building, out the gate, and up the street. The guy ran after him and tackled him after they'd run past eight apartment buildings and brought him back.

From there, Humphrey was taken inside and sat at the kitchen table and the guy stood right next to him until the psych team arrived. Every time he tried to close the kitchen door for some privacy, the guy would open the door again. He put on his headphones and listened to his music.

So the female from the psych team arrived and asked Humphrey why he wanted to kill himself. Humphrey told her, "I'm not going to bother trying to explain anything since you're not going to listen to me. You're going to take me no matter what I say anyway."

"Could you walk out to the ambulance for me?" she asked.

Humphrey refused to go.

The female sighed and said, "If you don't get in the ambulance willingly, I'll call the police. They'll put you in cuffs and take you to the psych hospital that way."

Not wanting to be handcuffed, Humphrey walked out to the ambulance. When he got out to the ambulance, he was told to lay down. The EMT then put on and tightened the light brown leather restraints. They stopped the ambulance just as they began to drive off when Humphrey said he wasn't sure if he had insurance, but Tony cleared that up real fast and they took him back to the psych ward in Van Nuys.

Humphrey was hospitalized for two weeks this time again at Van Nuys Psychiatric. A whole fourteen days. Not only was he sent for the kid's bloody nose that he didn't even do, but Tony talked to the female upstairs. She said she saw Humphrey and his brothers throwing knives at a wooden board out back, which was typical guy stuff. She told Tony that Humphrey was throwing knives at his brothers, which never happened. Instead of Tony going to Humphrey and asking him about what happened, or even asking Garth or Salty about what happened, he called the hospital and told them Humphrey was throwing knives at his brothers.

It was a weekend. Tony and his girlfriend were at work as telemarketers. Humphrey and his brothers were home alone and bored, so they got six of the steak knives, two each, and they drew a target on a wooden board and they took turns throwing their knives at the board to see who could get closest to the center mark and win. No knives were thrown by either one of them until they were all three clear and out of the way. No one threw knives at anyone, and had Tony bothered to ask either one of them, he would have found that out. Why the female next door would say such a thing, Humphrey didn't know.

Humphrey was under the impression that he had been sent there for the bloody nose incident. It wasn't until he got to the hospital that he found out why he was there. They asked the typical "Do you know why you're here?" Humphrey never know. He always had to tell them what Tony told him to tell them.

When he found out, he was pissed off. Not only had he been sent there for the kid getting the bloody nose in the school's time out room, which he didn't do, but Tony had slumped on the knife throwing incident that actually happened more than two weeks prior, putting them both together. On the report, it was all made out that it happened on the same day. It basically said that Humphrey gave a kid a bloody nose at school, then went home and threw knives at his brothers. Anyone reading such a report would think that Humphrey was some kind of dangerous, psychotic bully. Both things happened at two different times, and neither one of the incidents had the true information, so things got bad for Humphrey real fast.

After being checked in and assigned his room, Humphrey went to the payphone and called Tony up to find out why he'd made the false report. He explained to Tony what really happened. All Tony had to tell him was, "If your brothers get taken away, I will never forgive you." Then he hung up.

It seemed that child services was investigating him for leaving Humphrey and his brothers alone without supervision. They had the same report that said Humphrey gave the kid a bloody nose and then threw knives at his brothers and they were looking into placing Humphrey's brothers into foster care. Tony could've cared less what the hospital was going to do to Humphrey over his false information. All he cared about were Garth and Salty and if they went into foster care. _Maybe he should have thought about that before he once again called the psych ward to get me admitted again,_ Humphrey thought angrily. Going off of this information, child services felt Humphrey was a threat and a danger to his brothers and were considering putting them in foster care. Humphrey, on the other hand, was not allowed to return home . . . ever. Child services said due to the report, he was not to return home or anywhere near his brothers for any reason, that he was to remain in the psychiatric hospital until a suitable group home could be found. If one could not be found by the end of two weeks, Humphrey would be transported to the California State Hospital in Napa, California and held there until a group home could be found.

As expected, Humphrey freaked. Things were getting out of control fast, and all over things he didn't do. After Tony's comment about not forgiving him if his brothers got taken by child services, Humphrey just lost it. He hung up the phone and began walking down the hall to leave. As one can imagine, he wasn't thinking clearly. He was crying and all he was thinking about was getting home and trying to fix things, even if that meant walking all the way home in his socks. Had he stopped to think, he would have realized a few things, the first being that he was in a locked psych ward. He wasn't going anywhere. Even if he did somehow make it out the two locked doors, he couldn't possibly walk over five miles in socks, shorts, and a T-shirt. It would tear up his feet. He couldn't take the bus without shoes, nor did he have the money anyway. Even if he got home, what could he possibly do? Not much before the police and ambulance would be there to take him back to the psych ward. His idea to go home and fix things was set to fail from the start, but he wasn't thinking straight. All he wanted was to be home and everything be all right. That wasn't going to happen, not now.

Halfway down the hall a male staff came up next to Humphrey and asked him, "Where are you going?"

While crying, Humphrey tried to say, "Home, to fix things."

Suddenly the staff member stopped walking.

Just as Humphrey turned to see why, he was grabbed from behind and thrown onto the floor face-down. Then the staff member placed his right knee on Humphrey's spine about midway down Humphrey's back and applied his full body weight until he was lifting himself off the floor. There was a series of very loud cracks and then extreme severe pain that Humphrey couldn't even describe. The staff member, doing what he just did had just caused a severe spinal injury. Humphrey let out a huge scream from the pain. Other staff members assumed Humphrey was just simply "going off" and came to help their buddy.

Humphrey was unable to move. They picked him up off the floor and he was carried to a solitary room, placed face-down on the mattress, and injected him with some Thora zine. He was then turned over onto his back and placed in five restraints, not like they needed them. He was unable to move. The good thing about it was, with being knocked out by the Thora zine, he wasn't awake to feel the pain in his back.

Humphrey didn't find out for another six years how bad the spinal injury was. He knew he hurt his back from the staff member, but he didn't know how badly. Not only did it cause the bed wetting to become more severe, but the pain got worse over the years. When he first got out of the psych ward, Humphrey was taking Tylenol every four to six hours like clockwork for the pain in his back. He could have taken stock in the darn company.

Over the years he needed something more. When the injury was fully discovered by a doctor in New York he put Humphrey on Vicodin. It was the first time that a good amount of the pain was taken away. Tylenol was okay, but the Vicodin allowed Humphrey to actually have most of his movement back.

As the years went on, more medication needed to be added to manage the pain in his back. The back pain caused him a lot of discomfort. Even with the medication there was breakthrough pain, but at least with the pain medication the pain was tolerable. To top it off, any stabs of pain in that area directly triggered flashbacks of the event when his back injury occurred, forced to replay being thrown to the floor, the knee in his back, and then placed in restraints, over and over again.

It would be about twelve hours or so before Humphrey would wake up. Sometime over the twelve hours, the staff came in and carried him to his room. He still wasn't able to move much, so he closed his eyes and stayed in bed for a while more. Then he tried to get up.

He was still in pain, but not as much as when the incident first occurred. Perhaps the sixteen or so hours of bed rest helped when the back swelled. He was no doctor, so he had no idea, but in that time, no one thought to do an x-ray or even a simple check up to check for damage. Nothing.

He managed to sit up and then stand using the foot board of the bed for balance, then he walked to the door of the room. He realized that during the time in solitary, they had assigned him to a different room, one room down from the nurse's station. By what happened earlier, he could understand why. They probably wanted to keep a better eye on him or something. Who knew?

At this time one of the staff members saw him up and told him to go to the medication window. He figured it was for some Tylenol or something due to the injury. When he got to the window the nurse handed him a cup with a pink liquid with the consistency of syrup. He said, "This doesn't look like Tylenol. What is it?"

"It's not Tylenol," the nurse replied. "It's liquid Thora zine."

He put the cup down and asked, "Could I have some Tylenol for my back pain?"

The nurse replied, "No," and again handed him the cup and told him to drink it.

He politely said, "No, thank you," and walked back to his room and laid down.

Ten minutes later, three staff members rushed in and grabbed him. Such violent grabbing and swift movement hurt his back. He screamed in pain. He was dragged to the solitary room and held against the wall. The nurse pulled down his pants and injected the Thorazine into his leg. He was then again laid on the bed on his back and put back in restraints. Again, he was glad to get the shot so he would be knocked out and not feeling the severe pain he was in by being dragged around by the staff.

Later that week, for the sake of his back, Humphrey just took their medication. He figured at least on the Thorazine all the time he wouldn't be in pain, and he figured it was a good idea since they still wouldn't give him any Tylenol. He slept a lot of the time. In fact Tony, his girlfriend, and his brothers came to visit. It was the one and only time they came, probably because of what happened during their visit.

About midway through the first week there they came to visit. It was about six pm. A staff member came to tell Humphrey he had a visitor. He was escorted to the visiting room just outside the locked ward. He felt very dizzy standing and trying to walk. He made it to the room and sat down. Tony asked him how he was doing. All that came out of his mouth was, "I'm doing ––" before his head hit the table. He imagined it looked like he had died or something. He had passed out from the high dose of Thorazine they had him on. They were unable to wake him up. He woke up about ten hours later back in his room with no memory of how he got back there. The only thing he remembered was sitting down at the visiting table. That's it. He was told what happened in the visiting room later. No one ever came to visit him there again.

During much of his stay, he slept due to the constant dose of Thorazine. Every time he woke up they would give him another dose to knock him back out, which was probably why his back pain wasn't as bad. With all the constant sleep no stress was being put on his back.

About four or five days later, it was almost two weeks. Humphrey found that time went by fast when he slept all the time. They were finally lowering the doses and he was able to stay awake for a while. He was still medicated to the point where he was still weak and tired. It just wasn't enough to actually fully knock him out.

He met with the social worker who informed him again that he wouldn't be going back home. No group home or foster home could be found for him. He informed Humphrey that if one couldn't be found by that Friday, on the following Monday Humphrey would be transported to Napa State Hospital for holding until a foster or group home could be found.

Humphrey wanted to make some phone calls right away, but he had to go to a group therapy meeting first. Not wanting to be put in any more pain, he just went. What he found disturbed me. The group had a man teaching all the kids on the Wolfs' unit, some kids as young as six and seven years old about condoms. He asked for a volunteer. A Wolf about ten years old stood up and went to the front. The man had a banana and handed the kid a banana and a condom and taught the kid how to apply it to the banana and roll it down the banana. Humphrey saw no reason why a child younger than fifteen had to know anything about condoms. He failed to see how teaching kids about condoms had anything to do with their mental health. _This and other sexual education teachings is something the child's parents need to be doing, or a sex education class at the child's school, not a psychiatric hospital_ , Humphrey thought. Thinking of it being inappropriate made itself clear later that afternoon because a kid was punished. After the sex end group meeting, the staff found a towel that was rolled up into a makeshift vagina and the kid was pouring shampoo into it to act as a lubricant. Humphrey imagined the kid was pretty embarrassed. He just felt it was wrong for such young kids to be learning about sex, masturbation, and condoms. That's how he feel about it anyway.

After the group, Humphrey took what energy he had and made some calls. He was told if he could find a family member who would let him live with them, he could be placed with them. He figured that way he would be able to work on fixing this huge mess if he could get placed with one of the family. Unfortunately, he remembered that he wasn't liked like his brothers. It was hopeless from the start. Either he was told, "No!" and hung up on, or just straight hung up on. By now Tony's false story had made it to all the family and no one wanted anything to do with him. He got upset. He didn't want to be in one of these state hospital places till he was eighteen years old, and that was only if they held him until he was eighteen. He'd heard some held people till they were twenty-one, and he wouldn't be twenty-one for another five years.

He hung up the phone and pretty much ran to his room as best as he could with his hurt back, feeling very upset. He just wanted the whole world to open up and swallow him, but because he was upset again, two staff members came in and told him he had to go to solitary, or "time out" as they called it, and cool off. He asked, "Could I just be left alone please?"

They then approached him and told him to again go to solitary. When he didn't move, they grabbed him and took him to the solitary room to "cool off" because he was angry, upset, and crying in frustration. Apparently he wasn't allowed to be angry or upset.

It was almost eight PM. They injected him with more Thorazine, locked the door, and turned off the lights in the solitary room. He wasn't in restraints this time. The Thorazine didn't work. He got tired, but he didn't pass out. Instead, he was getting scared. The room was very dark, seeing as it was after eight pm and they had turned most of ward lights down. The only light coming in was from the nurse's station and it barely lit one foot into the room in front of the door through the little window. The only other light coming into the room was from the grate-covered window on the other side of the room. The hospital sat next to a big white building, but moonlight was still able to shine down and bounce in off the white painted wall of the building next door. It was enough to light the corner of the room by the grate-covered window. He was left in the room overnight until morning when the sun came up some time around eight or nine am.

No bathroom and no food. He sat in the corner of the room by the grate-covered window all night. It was very cold, perhaps sixty-six degrees or so, but there were no blankets, just the blue hospital mattress covered with a white fitted hospital sheet and restraints hanging off of it. He had on socks, shorts, and a T-shirt. He sat down and pulled his shirt over his legs and pulled his arms in to keep warm.

He couldn't take it anymore and began to cry, begging to God or whoever was out there to please let him die. He wanted his life to end. Then his thoughts turned on him. He began telling himself he was a bad person that he must have been bad to get treated like this. He went through a lot that night. The staff at the psych ward had succeeded. They had broken him. He no longer cared anymore. He didn't care what happened to him anymore.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

It was one of the worst nights of Humphrey's life and would affect him up to present day. Because of that night, he became terrified of the dark.

After coming out of solitary, he barely talked. He mostly kept his head down and looked at the floor. He sat alone when he did eat. He slept in his bed ninety percent of the time. While in school at the hospital, he barely spoke. He stopped caring. He pulled himself inside his mind and his body went on autopilot. He did what he was told, said what they wanted him to say, and took what they wanted him to take. He didn't even remember much of the rest of the stay after that night in solitary. He just existed.

Finally, Friday arrived. He was asked to go and meet with the social worker. He was told that still a group home was not able to be found. He was told they decided that based on his behavior (or lack thereof since they'd broken him) he would be allowed to return home. However, there would be some stipulations.

He was not allowed to be alone with his brothers, ever. He was to be supervised at all times. If he did go anywhere with anyone, Tony was to be informed of who he was going with, where he was going, a contact phone number for the place, and when he was to return home. He was not to go anywhere without Tony's knowledge period. When he returned home, was of this was explained all over again. He mostly just slept. He was still inside himself. Over the course of a few days, he began to come back out of himself.

That following Friday after being released from Van Nuys Psych under Tony's watch, Tony had him come with him to the new school he would be going to called Tobin world. He would be sent to Tobin world since the last one expelled him for the bloody nose incident that he didn't even do.

The lobby of the school was like a hotel lobby. It had a double grand staircase and looked pretty nice, but that was for show. There was no tour or anything. They met with the principal and did a meeting to decide which classroom Humphrey would be placed in. He had the weekend to get ready.

By Sunday, Humphrey was more or less back to his old self, but not without problems. The damage had been done. The last stay affected him. In addition to the new school, Tony had him seeing a therapist at the Glen Roberts Child Study Center in Glendale. He first started seeing a female therapist. He didn't mesh well with her at all.

On that Sunday evening, Humphrey was looking at the new school as a brand new start. Tony took him to get new some new things for school. However, they came to find out most were not allowed. No backpacks were allowed. Students were to come with nothing but shoes, socks, pants/shorts, a shirt, and a Saltyet for when it got cold. Nothing else. Nothing in their pockets.

The following morning, the bus arrived and Humphrey was picked up around eight am. It sucked being picked up in that bus. It was a forty-foot bus with "TOBINWORLD" written on the side. He was about sixteen and a half, almost seventeen, when he started going to the new school. It was a summer school. He had a feeling that this one would be the worse school yet. The school was located in Glendale, California.

There was a staff member, besides the bus driver, that was on the bus in case one of the kids needed to be restrained and was also there to search the students if they saw a bulge or suspected one of them had something in their pockets. Because of this rule, Humphrey's backpack stayed at home, but he figured his wallet, keys, and a pen he got from the ninety-cent store wouldn't be a problem. He was wrong. Once on the bus, a staff member asked him to stand back up. He then asked Humphrey, "What's that in your back pocket?"

Humphrey said, "My wallet." Not only did the guy take his wallet, but also his house keys were taken away on the bus. He asked, "What are you doing?"

The guy told Humphrey, "Students are not to have anything on their person but their clothes and shoes."

The pen wasn't found on the search by the male staff member on the bus. Humphrey explained that the items were his, that the wallet had his ID and some money, and he needed his keys as he was a latch key kid, (well, he was before his last stay at the hospital), and the keys were for his bike lock and so forth. He was told he would get them back at the end of the day. He was ticked off to have his things taken from him.

The school treated students like they were little kids, although Humphrey felt more like he was going to prison. The students were never alone for one second from the time they were picked up to the time they were dropped back off home. They had a staff with them at all times. The staff all wore blue shirts with "TOBINWORLD" that had a rainbow over it on the front of their shirts. They really stood out on field trips, like when they went to the city library and such. If someone had to go to the bathroom, they had a staff member with them standing right behind them while they took a pee. The school totally felt like a prison to Humphrey. Their security cameras, locked gates, and staff all over the place. Humphrey figured that the staff might as well have had them all in handcuffs and in cells. His first day there he was actually attacked and almost killed, and by a staff member of all people.

It was a summer school of sorts. Humphrey came into the classroom, took his seat, and was given class work. He took out an ink pen he had bought at the dollar store and began doing his work. One of the staff members known as "Myers" came up to him and accused Humphrey of stealing his pen. Humphrey told him, "You're mistaken. This pen belongs to me." He went back to doing his work.

Myers ordered Humphrey to give him the pen. Humphrey refused. He then tried to snatch it out of Humphrey's hand. He failed. Then he lunged at Humphrey, pushed him back in his chair, tipping him backward in his desk, breaking the table that was behind him in half and smashing the fan that was on the table into pieces. Humphrey ended up on the floor on his back with Myers on top of him. The pen flew from Humphrey's hand on the way down and landed by the wall under the window.

Myers then pulled Humphrey from his desk (it was a desk combined with a chair) and he put Humphrey on his stomach. That's when he noticed the pen by the window. He picked up the pen and said, "Now who has the pen?"

Humphrey told him, "Good for you."

Myers was holding Humphrey down on the ground. Another staff member from the classroom next door heard the crash and came in. The other staff member came in to help hold Humphrey down. He assumed Humphrey was "going off." Mind you, Humphrey wasn't fighting back. All of a sudden, his arms and legs were extended out like he was flying. That's when Myers put his elbow into Humphrey's right shoulder blade and began pressing and drilling it in until Humphrey was screaming out in pain. The more he screamed, the harder Myers pushed his elbow into Humphrey, smiling as he did it, obviously getting a lot of enjoyment from causing Humphrey pain.

Humphrey was struggling to get Myers off of him to stop the pain. Myers and the other staff member added more weight to his back. That's when he began having trouble getting a breath from all the weight on top of him. He began moving, trying to shift their weight so he could breathe. As time went on, he was having a harder and harder time breathing and thus, was struggling more and more, panicking, trying to get air. This went on for about thirty minutes.

He was suffocating. He began to become lightheaded and very dizzy and his eye sight began to get blurry. He was about to pass out. He knew he was about to die and was having mixed feelings. On one hand, he didn't want to die. But on the other hand, he was tired of being hurt by people and was looking forward to his life ending so he didn't have to be hurt by people anymore.

Then, suddenly, they both shifted their weight at the last second and he was able to get a breath. Then he was finally let up. He was helped up and told to go down to the black top to meet with the other kids.

He walked down the grand staircase and saw Tony sitting waiting to meet with the principal for an IEP meeting. Tony didn't even notice Humphrey's red face, his tear-stained face. He didn't even realize that had they not shifted their weight at that time, he wouldn't be there for the IEP anymore; he would be there to claim Humphrey's body.

Humphrey walked by him and walked out the door, which opened to the black top. Myers stopped Humphrey when they got outside and put his mouth to Humphrey's ear and whispered, "If you do anything I will kick your ass, I don't care". The incident report that was filed by Myers read:

"Student kicked and punched staff and needed to be restrained on the floor for a time of thirty minutes. Student attempted to continue attacking staff. Incident resulted in minimal injury to student and bruises on staff."

Humphrey had never hit any staff member at any time. Besides screaming in pain, he hadn't resisted the staff holding him on the floor at all except for trying to shift their weight when he was suffocating. But of course, according to the school, he was lying and he was suspended for three days for attacking staff.

Once he got home, the staff member on the bus returned his wallet and keys to him. It was later worked out that he would have permission to have the items as he needed to have them. The other issue with Tobin world was his therapist appointment.

The center that was doing the therapy was three blocks away from the school, but because of the school's policy, Humphrey couldn't just leave the school. He had to get on the bus and be driven home to his front door. They would wait until he closed the door before they drove away.

The problem was that Humphrey lived clear across town. It took him almost an hour to ride his bike all the way back to the school, and then ride the three blocks past the school he had to go. One of the staff stopped him when he passed the school one time. He was asking how Humphrey got back there. Humphrey told him, "I have a therapist I see just three blocks away."

But because of their policy about not letting students be alone and having them have to be dropped off at home before they could go anywhere else, Humphrey had to take the school bus home, to get his bike, and ride all the way back to where he just came from to go to his therapist's office. It was stupid.

It would have been so much less of a headache to step outside the school and catch the city bus as there was a stop sign right in front of the school and take the bus three blocks to my therapist's office and then take the city bus home. But, nope. That would have been too simple.

Humphrey was also running into some issues with the first therapist and I was soon transferred to a new therapist named Derrick Mason. He came to help a lot. He had been in the practice for much longer and knew it was sometimes more effective to throw away the book sometimes. Over time they built up trust. In Humphrey's past, Derrick Mason was one of few therapists who was able to help him cope with the abuse at home, the hospitals, and at school.

The psychiatrist, who also worked at Glen Roberts Child Study Center, didn't, however. She decided to put Humphrey on a medication called Depakote. Along with a nasty taste, the medication made him sleep almost constantly. He was awake to eat meals and pretty much was sleeping through school. After a few days of this, he told Tony he wasn't going to take it anymore.

Tony decided to start crushing the pills up and putting them into Humphrey's food. He was eating a hamburger one evening for dinner, though something didn't taste right. He began to tear apart the burger patty and discovered chunks of the Depakote pills. He threw out the hamburger and took out a can of corn and ate that for dinner. For months he wouldn't eat anything unless he saw it being prepared from start to finish, or that it came out of a sealed can that he opened himself.

Something else was starting to happen around this time as well that made things even more difficult. Since Humphrey had been ten (as far back as he could remember) he had had the ability to pick up on others' emotions. After some research, he found that this gift was called being an "empathic." In short, he was able to pick up on the emotions of those around him. Mind you, he wasn't able to do this with everyone, and it was without choice. He had thus far been unable to choose with whom a connection was made or when. It was quite random. Often he feel it to be both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing in that it helped him better help others. In other ways, it was a curse in that there were some things he could rather go without feeling. Going to such special education schools with such a gift made it difficult. Some of the kids cycled through emotions like people flipped through channels on a TV. He had some difficulties with this gift at all of the schools. However, the students going to Tobin world were far more emotional than other kids he had been around. Many students in the classroom he was in cycled through different emotions swiftly. They would have a meltdown if one of the staff took one of their points away. The student would actually break down crying and begging, "No, no, no, please don't! Pleeeaaassseee!" If the staff member didn't give the point back from them begging, the kid would then go into full meltdown mode and start overturning their desk, throw books, and so on.

Sometimes Humphrey would get so frustrated and fatigued that he would just need a break from the exposure, even if that meant a bathroom break. During PE time, he often sat alone about ten or more feet away from any people.

Back when all this was going on, Humphrey wasn't even aware he had this gift. He just thought all these feelings he had were all his. It was confusing because he couldn't understand why he would suddenly become upset when nothing was going on around him to trigger anger at the moment. He just knew that when he sat alone he felt better, calmer. He didn't know why. It wasn't be for another ten to twelve years before he would learn exactly why.

But the school would observe his troubles with emotions and he was falsely diagnosed as "Severely Emotionally Disturbed" (SED for short). The schools did not recognize such gifts, so he was pegged with SED.

About six months into the school year, Tony found out that Humphrey could qualify for Social Security Disability and applied. Humphrey was approved a few months later. SSI issued a $1,700.00 check for back pay that he would have gotten had he been approved the day he applied. A back pay or "retro" check was what they called it. They told Tony he could take a portion for rent, so he took the check and deducted rent for the few months they were waiting, some $800 or so dollars. The rest was used to buy some clothing, his own TV and VCR so Humphrey tape the home improvement shows that were on while he was at school so he could watch them later, and some other odds and ends.

He also got a CB radio that he got much use from. He loved being able to talk to other people. The family lived close to the five-lane freeway so he frequently talked with the long haul truckers and stuff. It was a good stress release. He told his brothers, "Don't ask me how," because even he had no idea. He came up with a rig to boost his signal, with which he managed to get an extra four or five miles off of it, but what he didn't know was that he was bleeding over onto other frequencies.

Humphrey found this out one morning the school bus pulled up while he was chatting with this long haul trucker who was heading to Portland. He was saying his goodbyes and apparently it was bleeding over onto the school bus radio frequency. When he got on the bus, some of the students told him they could hear what he was saying on the bus radio and from then on Humphrey had to watch what he was saying when the school bus was due to arrive.

Most of Humphrey's free time after school, though, was spent at Griffith Park. After getting home he would make a snack and then head off on his bike. He would go to Travel Town where he would ride the scaled down steam trains for only fifty cents a ride. The box cars had the ceiling removed and three seats per car were added. He rode in a seat inside the scaled down model. It was fun. Other times he just rode around the park hanging out. It was nice to be away from people and just chill in nature either just hanging out or meditating. He loved it there.

Later in the school year the family moved down the street to a two-bedroom apartment. Tony and his girlfriend Joanna were having problems. She often drank a malt liquor called "King Cobra." The drink would often make her violent. She hated Humphrey's brothers with a passion. One time one of Humphrey's brothers was being disrespectful towards Tony and apparently Joanna got tired of it because she got up and pinned Garth to the wall by way of putting her hand around Garth's neck.

Some other issues that occurred when Joanna got drunk was when she ripped out all the telephone lines in the house once. She grabbed the line that was stapled to the wall and just started pulling it from the wall. Another time while staying with Humphrey, his brothers, and Tony in Baldwin Park, she took Tony's wallet and used the money to go get drunk and ditched the wallet in some bushes. Thankfully, the wallet was recovered later so no cards had to be canceled and replaced.

There was another time when they were in Baldwin Park and Tony and Joanna were staying over, she was drunk and then got a bottle of octane booster and was pouring it on a rag and sniffing it on the back patio. Tony had gone out to tell her dinner was almost done. She looked up at him and said, "Please don't melt me".

She would often leave, get drunk, and arrive back home later. Humphrey was in bed one evening. They had just moved four blocks down to the two-bedroom apartment from the motel Tony had been staying in. She had just come back from drinking, but was still drunk. She was knocking on the living room window, asking Tony, "Tony, let me in, I'm cold." When Tony wouldn't let her in, she started hollering that he was an asshole, going on and on. Then she started in talking crap about Humphrey. "At least my sixteen year old son isn't still wearing diapers." Tony had found Humphrey's stash of diapers from time to time, but Tony just thought Humphrey liked wearing them; he didn't know Humphrey was wearing them for the bed wetting problem.

During this time Tony and Joanna broke up. It was something they would often do. They broke up and get back together about one to three times a year, on average, although it was less as the years went on. Maybe it had something to do with her not drinking as much, but while in the two-bedroom apartment Tony wanted some female company and invited over a co-worker from the telemarketer room he worked for. A girl named Jenna Gibson. She was a nice girl, more or less. Tony had a fling with her for a few weeks while Joanna and he were split up. It never was dull in the house. There was always something going on.

Because they only moved four blocks away, Humphrey was still having to go to Tobin world. Myers spent most of the year calling him names like, "White Wolf," and other remarks, anything he could think of to get him upset so Humphrey would try to leave so he could justify slamming Humphrey to the floor, claiming Humphrey was "going off." He seemed to get some sort of sick pleasure out of hurting Humphrey. Myers was one of those guys who pushed weights, drank body building shakes, and stuff. He brought a big jug of body building mix with him and would mix up container after container. He was always looking for a chance to get into fights to have a reason to hold down a student and do things to cause pain, to show he was in charge and that if you crossed him, you would know pain. Humphrey found him to be a very disturbing guy.

It was during this time that Humphrey began cutting. When he was doing it in school, it was mostly with tacks and things. He was having trouble dealing with Saba's comments and such, as well as dealing with the emotions from the other students in the classroom. When he was injuring himself, it would dull the emotions and bring him some peace. He would feel calm. He got into the habit of whenever someone did something to him, said something to him, or when he was picking up emotions from others that he didn't like feeling, he would injure himself. He had no idea what he had started and it quickly got out of control fast.

Myers was constantly trying to get at him. He looked for any reason to slam Humphrey on the floor, claiming he was "going off." He would do his name-calling thing, calling Humphrey "white Wolf," tell Humphrey he was worthless and so on until Humphrey decided to get up and try to step outside the classroom to cool down, and then he would slam Humphrey to the floor and hold him down.

There was a period of time when Myers was even keeping Humphrey's lunches from him. The school had these flash cards they were doing in the mornings. They gave the students flash cards and a timer that counted down seconds. The goal was to memorize the cards and do as many as they could in a set period of time of about forty-five seconds. Unfortunately, Humphrey had reached a point that he was not going to improve unless he had more time. However, they had a rule that said each student had to improve by two cards per week. No excuses. He just wasn't able to do any better. Because of this, he reached a point where he didn't take part anymore. He was tired of getting frustratingly upset at not doing any better, and then having Myers come over and tell him, "You had better do better." In addition, Myers told him, "If you refuse, you will have to write out of the dictionary for three hours." To hell with that, Humphrey thought. I'm not going to copy out of any dictionary, certainly not for three hours. He went on to tell told Humphrey, "Unless you do the three-hour dictionary writing, you won't get anything, including lunch." When lunch came around, he would place Humphrey's on the table next to Humphrey just out of reach, but just close enough for Humphrey to smell all day. This went on throughout the week.

On Monday, it was a new week, but Humphrey still refused to get himself all worked up over the cards. He knew he couldn't get any more. Because of this, Myers would start the dictionary threat again and Humphrey didn't get his lunch for another week. This went on for over two months. By the middle of the first week Myers started keeping Humphrey 's lunch from him, Humphrey had begun making himself a larger breakfast, and would just have lunch when he got back home.

The school also had a problem with Humphrey because he wouldn't pick anything in their reward room place. In the room the students made a long term contract for prizes. The contracts were behavior related. That's what the school was all about. Behavior. Learning classwork came second. The contract was for things like "I will sit still in my seat for a whole week" or "I will not refuse commands for at least three days" and so on. Some of the prizes in the room were model cars, sweaters, baseball hats, stickers, coloring books, and so on. Basically, things for all age groups. However, Humphrey didn't find anything interesting, and since they didn't do cash rewards either they had nothing he was interested in to be doing any kind of contract for, first of all. And second of all, the reward system again made him feel like he was being treated like a small child.

Humphrey understood the kids there. Mentally speaking, many were very much younger than their age. When he would be in the high school classroom, for example, and when one of them would lost their points they would have a meltdown similar to a toddler would have, begging Mommy not to take the toy away and then when she didn't give it back they would throw themselves on the floor and kick and scream. But in this case, instead of throwing themselves on the floor, they would overturn desks and throw schoolbooks. But all in all, many of the students had the mental age of toddlers who were trapped in the bodies of fifteen to seventeen year old teenagers. At times it was quite surreal to watch these almost grown adults flip out over losing a point on their daily point sheets.

It was the same thing with the "class store." Kids would flip out if they couldn't get what they wanted from the closet. The biggest item was a can of soda. Humphrey didn't see what the big deal was. They could've easily gone home and went to the corner store and bought one when they got home.

Again, it was the same thing with the on-site Baskin Robins ice cream store. They got one, two, or three scoops of ice cream based on their points. The kids would have a meltdown if they were one point away from being able to get the third scoop. Again, Humphrey couldn't understand why they simply could not wait until they got home to get a bowl of ice cream from the freezer.

Humphrey knew he wasn't like most of these kids. The school's point system didn't work on him. He wasn't going to cry, scream, and beg for the staff member to give him a point back. There was actually a time where one of the aids tried reverse psychology. Humphrey found it funny.

When he didn't do something they wanted him to do, they would say something like, "Humphrey, if you don't do your assignment, I am going to give you a point!" Instead of threatening to take a point, they threatened to give him one. They just couldn't figure me out.

The problem was simple, He just wanted to be treated with respect, not treated like a five year old. Simple as that. If the staff did just that they could've gotten along with Humphrey just fine. Most of the staff were used to babying most of the students. They were not used to handling a student that didn't have the mental age of a five or six year old.

Myers was all about brute force and doing what he could to make whoever crossed him suffer. Midday on one Friday, the class went to what the school called the "Teen Lounge" for an hour as they did every Friday. Humphrey had lost too many points by that time, but he didn't care. He was told he could work on the classroom computer while they were gone by the teacher.

Humphrey was left in the room with Myers and another student. While on the computer Myers stood by the classroom door standing guard and the student came up behind Humphrey and placed a noose made from a jump rope around his neck and began pulling. He did his best to pull and get his neck out of the noose. Meanwhile, Myers stood there and did nothing. Then the student came at Humphrey and attacked him. Using take down methods taught to him by his godfather, he was able to defend himself and place the student safely on the floor and hold him down. When the class began walking back, that's when Myers got involved. He grabbed Humphrey off the student and pushed him into his chair. He lost more points for "Attacking a student."

A few days later, another incident happened. One of the students, a kid named Carlos Cavell, asked to see some of the short stories Humphrey kept on a disk. Humphrey showed him, but when he got the disk back it was erased. He was pretty angry. He reported it to the teacher, but nothing was done, so Humphrey took the kid's tokens as payment for the erased disk.

The tokens were used by the school to rate a student's behavior during the day along with a point system with a possible five points per hour. Based on the number of tokens one had they were given a choice of which reward at the end of the day they got, such as a candy bar or a bag of chips.

Taking the tokens didn't do anything. The teachers kept track in other ways. The tokens were for kids to see how well they were doing by how many were in their cup at the edge of their desk. Humphrey was angry that all that work he had done had just been deleted with nothing done about it. He wanted some justice, so in anger he took the tokens.

What he should have done was kept a backup disk. When he interacted with the kids he saw them as fifteen and sixteen year olds, not toddlers in an adult body, so the thought that a kid would find it funny as hell to delete my stories never crossed his mind.

He had to stay behind that day while the rest of the class went to Baskin Robins that was on the school. Of course he was left with Myers. It was no more than two minutes that he began messing with Humphrey. He had Humphrey stand up and shoved him against the closet door and began searching his pockets for the tokens. He had already put them in the teacher's cup that had the rest of the tokens. They were not on his person.

He then pushed Humphrey into sitting back in his desk. He took Humphrey's hands and forced them onto the desk palms down. Humphrey had his hands clenched into fists, holding them against his chest at the time. Myers grabbed Humphrey's hands, put them onto the desk, and began mashing them down until they laid flat. It hurt, but Humphrey kept picking them up and telling him to back off and leave him alone. Myers kept grabbing Humphrey's hands and forcing them back onto the desk palm side down.

When Humphrey wouldn't sit with his hands flat on the desk palms down, Myers resorted to name-calling again, telling Humphrey, "You're a waste of time, you're a lost cause." When Humphrey made eye contact with him he said, "Why are you looking at me? Are you gay? You're gay, huh? We should put you in the other class with Freddy." (Freddy was the cross-dresser that was in the classroom next door.)

The day finally came to an end. By the end of that day Humphrey couldn't take it anymore. Day after day he took his verbal abuse and being physically abused by Myers. He decided he was going to end his life. He was walking out to get on the school bus. On the way to the bus, the teacher stopped him to talk to him for a second. The teacher told him, "Don't do anything rash. It's not worth it." Then he walked away. How did he know what Humphrey was thinking? Did he have a clue what had gone on in the classroom that day? He wasn't there to see any of the abuse. Myers made sure when he did it no other staff were around. Did he know what Humphrey was about to do? Who knew? The odd thing was that the teacher's comment made Humphrey reach out one more time for help to make Saba's abuse stop.

That evening after Humphrey was dropped off at home and took off on his bike. He rode to his therapist's office and told him if no one was going to do anything about Myers he was going to end his life to make the abuse stop. He decided to send me to Van Nuys Psychiatric Hospital once again. Once he got home the mobile psych team and an ambulance arrived shortly after he got back. This time he was held for three days.

Thankfully, not much happened, only that he got yelled at for talking to the "rainbows." Yeah, Humphrey thought the dude was nuts too. Apparently during the time between his last stay and this one they had made some changes. All kids there under the age of ten were called rainbows.

On his second day there he walked by this kid's room. He was about six years old. He was sitting on his bed crying, looking out his wire mesh window at the white brick wall of the building next door. The only thing outside the window was a bush with no leaves. He wanted to go home.

Humphrey walked in and sat down next to him and asked him if he knew what his name was. It was Tyler. Humphrey asked him how old he was, and he told Humphrey six. What a six year old could possibly do to be put in a psych ward was beyond Humphrey, who put his arm around him and told him it would be okay, that he would be going home soon. That's when a small blue bird landed on one of the branches of the dead bush outside.

They were talking about the bird when a staff member walked by and saw Humphrey talking to Tyler. He came in and told Humphrey that he wasn't allowed to talk to the rainbows. Humphrey thought he was nuts or something. When Humphrey asked, "What are you talking about?" he replied, "Tyler is a rainbow. You're not supposed to be talking to him." It was on the next day that one of the staff explained to Humphrey what the whole rainbow thing meant.

Finally on the third day Humphrey was released and sent home and Tony believed him about the abuse. According to the school Myers lost his job and a note in his file was added so he could not work with children in the future. At least there was some justice in the world.

They were already planning to move again, this time to North Hollywood. When he got out of Van Nuys Psychiatric Hospital, Humphrey was terrified of school. He flat-out refused to go back to Tobin world, so they waited until they moved to North Hollywood. From there, Tony tried to find another school, but he was pegged as a problem student and no one wanted to take him. She found a school called "New School". Already Humphrey was getting bad feelings about the place before they'd even stepped foot inside.

Just like Tobin world, New School looked good in the lobby. They did a tour, but they weren't able to see any classrooms because the students were too out of control. Going down one hall, they saw a student locked out of a classroom. He was banging on the door, screaming to let him in or he would kick someone's ass and so on.

Then Humphrey got this feeling that there was a "time out" room on the site. As it turned out he was right. When he asked about it, the female said, "Yes, there is a "time out room" on the site, but you are not allowed to see it." Can you say red flag, Humphrey thought.

They then sat down and began paperwork.

The lady asked Humphrey, "So, Humphrey, what is it that you want to do with your life?"

Humphrey said, "When I turn eighteen, I'm planning on dropping out. I'm fed up with being assaulted by staff and students. I'm fed up with being afraid to go to school.

She said, "If you're just going to be dropping out in four months, then it's not worth doing the paperwork."

So they went home and Humphrey stayed out of school for the remaining four months. He dropped out for his own safety. He was tired of getting an anxiety attack every morning waiting for the bus to arrive, wondering if Myers was going to hurt him that day, or whether was it going to be verbal assault, or refused to be given his lunch. He never knew what was coming, so it caused him to have anxiety attacks.

On December 26th, 1998 Humphrey turned eighteen. Because he switched from a child to an adult status, SSI canceled his disability. They felt he was able to work. He had always been interested in going into law enforcement, but due to his problems he wasn't able to do that. So he went to the next best thing: security. And he was actually very happy doing that, for the most part. He decided to give it a try. Looking through the paper, he came across a company called Phil Am Security.

The company was a bit off, to say the least. First of all, they didn't have Humphrey take any tests, and at the time he wasn't aware that he needed to apply for a guard card. They gave him a uniform and he had to buy his own badge which the company was supposed to already have one for him.

His first day at work was very enlightening about the company. He was put with a partner and sent over to a high-risk building where crime was a daily occurrence. The first major red flag was his partner. Growing up he had always been drawn to CO2 air guns, so he was a bit shocked to see a BB gun in his partner's gun holster. This made him quite uneasy. When he asked his partner about it, the guy told Humphrey that he didn't have a carry license and had his real gun under the seat in the truck.

The next red flag was the following week. Humphrey went to work that night and the owner drove him and several other guards out to an apartment building in San Bernardino, California. They had to stop at the police station because apparently the owner of the security company he was working for didn't check with the local police. Apparently the uniform happened to be the same style as their local sheriff's department, so the police office was instructing him to change the uniform design/color so as to not be mistaken for the local police officer.

So they ended up basically hanging out at the apartment building the owner of the company had as a client for several hours. It was very boring being there all day and basically just sitting around munching on food all afternoon. They didn't really secure anything. A week later when the pay check came out, it didn't include the ten hours Humphrey had spent at the building in San Bernardino. When he confronted the owner about it, he told Humphrey that it was done on his off time, even though Humphrey had been in full uniform. Humphrey made a few calls to the labor board. They were able to get him paid for those ten hours.

The fourth red flag was that the owner didn't pay his employees with checks. He paid them with cash that came right out of the ATM. No tax information, nothing. This was the last needed red flag for Humphrey, on top of the report from the labor board that the company was not legit or legal. It was one of those hole in the wall types of companies. Humphrey quit that same day.

About a week later he found an ad for another security company called "Initial Security". It was a company based out of Santa Fe, California. His first site they gave him was a six-story assisted living home in Glendale, California.

Basically, once per hour, Humphrey went from floor to floor, checking to make sure the building was secure and all that. He was also given a pager so, should any of the residents need help, they could page him to their apartment.

It was these types of places that Humphrey felt the most happiest. The reason was because he felt happiest when he was able to help people. He got great joy from helping the residents. For example, people would come in with several bags from the store, but couldn't get them all in the elevator before the door closed, so Humphrey used his key to lock one of the elevators open, helped the person put everything in there, and once on their floor, lock the elevator again and help the person get their bags to their apartment, and then turned the elevator back on. He could just see that they were grateful for the help.

One night, this female paged him about a break-in. When he got up there, she informed him that someone was coming in through the air vents and taking dresses from her closet. Clearly, no one was coming into the apartment through a three-inch high, six-inch long air vent. But for her, she believed it. To help her feel safe, he opened the storage room on the other side of the vent to show her the room was empty and locked. Then, to further help her feel safe, he told her he would check on her apartment and make sure the storage room was secure. He figured he might as well since he had to be there anyway every thirty minutes to check the floor, so it really wasn't any big deal, but it really helped her feel safe. It really was nice to feel that he was able to help people directly like that. Sure, he could have helped the public as a police officer too, but he wouldn't have had as often the chance to directly help people like he could working as private security.

In addition to working at the assisted living homes, he also worked at a few other locations, including a bank, the roof a factory to watch for fires while they were upgrading their systems, watched a temporary parking lot while the place was building a multi-level parking structure, among other places. He worked with Initial Security from mid-January of 1999 until the end of December 1999.

He relocated along with Tony and his brothers up to Stockton, California in January of 2000. The apartment wasn't quite ready yet, so they were sleeping on the floor at Tony's parents' house up in the mountains. It was harder to conceal the accidents in such a situation. What he did was he folded up a bath towel underneath him to lay on with a Food 4 Less shopping bag under that. In the morning, if he was wet, he would quietly get up, change his clothes, and place the towel in the clothes hamper. It wasn't the best situation but it worked. After all, due to being in such a remote location, using the diapers just wasn't practical. He just had to do what you could to manage the problem.

They were only up there for about three weeks when the apartment was finally ready in Stockton. It was a rainy day on the day they were moving in. It was a three-bedroom apartment and was the first time Humphrey had his own room. It sure made managing the wetting much easier. About four or five days later, he began working for Pinkerton Security.

He worked for Pinkerton Security only for a year and a half. At first things went good. Sadly, it wasn't always good.

About three months after moving into the Stockton apartment, Humphrey began having day time accidents. Thankfully, many of the day time accidents happened near or at home. The ones that did occur during work were small enough to be able to be taken care of swiftly in the men's' room so no one noticed.

The uniform was black pants and a blue shirt. The black pants helped to cover any small accidents. Humphrey kept a spare pair of pants in his duffel bag for accidents that weren't able to be hidden. At the time he was working more as a rover, working places where people had called off and they needed a temp. Some of the locations were, for example, a guard shack checking in trucks, watching a closed office building, and he worked at a recycling yard once.

The recycling yard was the place he almost broke his neck. It was very dark, so there was no lighting. He was doing a round and there was one of those sloped down ditches for trucks to back into so that the back of the trailer would be at the same level as the ground. He almost stepped off the edge, which led to about a four to five-foot drop.

It wasn't too long, though, before the day time wetting accidents were coming so frequently and becoming larger in quantity that he had no choice but to start wearing the diapers during the day in addition to at night. At least with the diapers, the only one who would know he had an accident was himself. He kept two or three diapers in his duffel bag from then on out.

At first, it was a bit difficult going to work wearing a diaper. He was very nervous. Wearing one at home is one thing. No one was around him. But wearing one at work took some getting used to. He managed to discover a few tips through trial and error that helped keep the fact that he was wearing diapers a secret.

The first was wearing the underwear over the diaper. Not only did it keep the kind of puffy diaper more flat, but because the underwear was snug, there wasn't the normally noticeable rustle of the plastic outer cover of the diaper. Just in case there was a plastic rustle, he kept a plastic bag in his pocket just in case someone asked, he could pull out the bag and say that it was the bag they heard. He also normally kept his keys in his pocket. He began using a key clip on his belt so every step he took make the keys jingle, which also helped cover up the noise. He guessed he did a good job keeping it discreet because in the end, no one at work knew he wore diapers. They had no idea.

While roving, he had been requesting a stable location to work. He was posted at a mental health center in Stockton (1212 California Street in Stockton, California).

It was a very large mental health center. They had one four-story building for children who needed therapy. Then they had the larger adult section at the other end of the property. The adult section included a day treatment program. They had social workers for those in group homes and such that handled their money and other affairs of those not well enough to do it themselves, groups, individual therapy, and they had three psychiatric wards, which was where things got out of control.

Up to this point, Humphrey had managed to keep control of the nightmares and flashbacks of the abuse when he was in the psych ward as a child. It was there, but he was able to live a pretty normal life. However, working at the psychiatric hospital, he knew he was going to have problems.

He accepted the site as he needed a stable pay check, but asked that very same day to be moved to a different location as soon as one was open. He figured he could probably keep it together for a short time. He figured something would be found in a few weeks.

Well, a few weeks turned into months. He had already begun having problems there due to being exposed to the psych ward during his shift. If that wasn't hard enough, he was having difficulties with the staff. Even so, he found himself going back to work at the mental health center. During nine to ten pm, they had a shift change where staff for the next shift would come and need to be let in. However, at the same time, Humphrey would get calls from the staff on the psych wards for roll away beds for patients when they had more patients than they had beds. Everything he tried to do to get both jobs done failed. He was one guard and doing two jobs at once just wasn't going to work, but he tried anyway.

First, he tried leaving the door to get the beds and then let in anyone who had to wait. They didn't have to wait longer than ten minutes at the most. He was reported for making the staff wait to be let in, so the next night he waited at the door and had the staff asking for the beds wait until ten pm. He got reported for not getting the beds.

Because of the stress from working at the mental health center, he decided to disclose his adult baby side to Tony, his girlfriend, and his brothers. He had reached a point where the stress caused from hiding being an adult baby was getting to be too much. Being an adult baby helped him be calm, to relax, and he had reached a point where he wished to expand on his role playing to be more than just a pacifier or a baby bottle. Since he lived with all of them and they would most likely find out soon, he felt they all needed to know. So around May or June, he decided to sit Tony down and explain to him about the diapers, that they weren't just a fetish that he had made that up as a quick answer so Tony would drop an uncomfortable subject. So he sat Tony down and told him that the diapers were really for managing bed wetting accidents. There was the adult baby side of him he wanted to share with Tony and those in the house so he didn't have to keep hiding everything as well, but he felt if he shared both the bed wetting and adult baby side of him at the same time it would be a bit of an overload, so he decided to share only the bed wetting information for the moment. He was tired of having to sneak the diapers in, sneak out the dirty diapers, and be on constant watch of anyone coming near where he had the stash of diapers. By having Tony know about the diapers Humphrey no longer had to be stressed out wondering if anyone would find out.

When he first shared his adult baby side with Tony, his first response was, "What will people think?" Humphrey didn't plan on telling every single person he came into contact with about it. He only told Tony, his girlfriend Joanna, and his brothers because they all lived with him and were bound to find out sooner or later. When he told Tony about it, Tony had many questions, as one would expect. Humphrey did his best to answer as many questions as he was able to. Some of the questions he still didn't have answers to himself. All he knew was he was tired of not being able to have adult baby furniture or adult baby clothing and stuff because he had to be hiding all of this. Once Tony was told about Humphrey's adult baby side he began to slowly buy the adult baby things he wanted to in order to make the role play more fun. He got his first sleeper about two weeks later from an adult baby who didn't want it anymore. About two months later he built his first prototype adult-sized crib. The original was made of only paper. He took sheets of printer paper and folded the sheets into two-inch wide bars and stapled them all together to form bars. Once the bars were created, it gave him the dimensions he needed in order to make the wooden crib. Two weeks after he made the paper bars prototype, he made a list of supplies needed. After Tony left for work, he took his bicycle and a cart that was attached to it and went to Home Depot to buy the supplies. Then he went home and started construction. In about six hours he had it all together and in working order.

He didn't plan on Tony finding out about the crib the way he did. He came home from work and went upstairs and opened Humphrey's door to ask him something. Whatever it was Tony wanted to ask him Humphrey didn't know because Tony didn't do what he walked in the room to do. He stopped in his tracks a few feet into the room, looked at the crib, and kept repeating, "Oh, my God . . . oh, my God" while walking backwards out of the room. So it didn't go as well as Humphrey had expected.

It was Tony who decided to bring in the apartment building manager and coworkers from work he was friends with to see the crib. If he was so worried about people finding out, then why did he insist on bringing people around to see the crib and other adult baby things Humphrey had? Humphrey didn't understand that.

A few months after they got to Stockton for the first time, Humphrey got to use Tony's computer on the Internet. He was spending some time looking for information on adult bed wetting. Sadly, most of what he found was message boards that had been taken over by some pretty mean people. Anyone asking a question or looking for support was met by cruel remarks. For example, one reply to a post asking for suggestions to reduce wetting was, "Just put a rubber band around Mr. Happy." Another suggested a zip tie. Just stupid remarks – mean, heartless remarks. Soon he had reached a point where he more or less gave up trying to find a supportive place.

That night in bed, something occurred to him. Since he couldn't find the support he was looking for, perhaps others out there had the same problem. He sat down and drew up ideas for plans of exactly what he was looking for. The next night was when the idea for a website site was born.

The next day he set out to find a website to use to make the site with. He quickly learned that many sites required the person running it to know HTML. Since he didn't know this computer language, he had a problem. How was he going to build a site without knowing HTML? It wasn't long before he came across a company called Homestead.

Homestead used drag and drop programs to build the sites. One had to choose what items they wanted to use, drag it to where they wanted it on the page they were making, and let go. From there one had the choice to change the colors, text, or whatever. For those who did still use HTML from time to time, they had a box one could click on and drop on the page and put in their HTML as needed. From that moment on, Humphrey decided homestead would be the engine of his site.

When he first started using Homestead, the program was very new. It was back in June of 2000. At that time it was free. About a year or so later was when they began charging for the service. They had a service for as little as five dollars for five pages, and for those wanting a .com address, they charged a onetime ten dollar fee and then two dollars a month for the .com address.

But clearly Humphrey needed much more space that just five pages, so he paid about thirty for several gigs of space for all the things he would do on his site, but it was worth every penny if it helped just one person, so he gladly paid it every month.

Humphrey first officially opened his website in June of 2000. Working on this site was where he spent his free time from the time he got off work until the time he went to bed. Every free minute was spent on not only running it, but doing his best to meet each member on chat or messenger or something more real time than a post. Sadly, the site had grown much larger from the six pages it was back in 2000. Sadly, he didn't get nearly as much free time to spend in the site's chat room as he did at the start.

Whatever needed to be done to help someone, Humphrey did it. He liked making a difference in peoples' lives when he could. The members on the site were the first things he thought of when he woke up, and the last thing he thought of when he went to bed. He cared about everyone on the site like his extended family, and that was the environment he kept on the site, that of a family helping each other when needed.

Humphrey ended up marrying and having to kids, Savannah and Sam. His life had turned around for the better. Until, his wife, Kate began the same abuse his father had given him.

Read Somebody to love me two, to find out more.

 **Read the sequel to this novel to find out what happens next, coming out soon!**

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